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DashiellCove's avatar
DashiellCove
Iron Contributor
Jul 04, 2025

Can't Format SD Card to FAT32 on Windows 11

It is a new 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card. When I try to format it using File Explorer or Disk Management, FAT32 isn't even an option. Only exFAT or NTFS show up.  I tried a few different method...
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FaniJocuri's avatar
FaniJocuri
Iron Contributor
Jul 04, 2025

Why don't I have the option to format to FAT32? There are several reasons and this is why you can not format sd card to fat32 in Windows.

1. Windows Limitations
By default, Windows File Explorer and Disk Management only allow FAT32 formatting on drives up to 32GB. This is an artificial limitation—FAT32 itself supports partitions up to 2TB, but Microsoft chose not to support formatting large volumes as FAT32 to push users toward exFAT and NTFS, which are more modern.

2. exFAT Becomes Default
For SD cards larger than 32GB, exFAT is the default and often the only option shown, since it's optimized for flash storage and supports larger file sizes (over 4GB), which FAT32 does not.

If you can not format SD card to FAT32, the built-in command-line tool will help sometimes like 

format /FS:FAT32 (but that often fails for drives >32GB). Please try a dedicated partition manager as it has more powerful features for disk partition in Windows 11/10.

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