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Resolved FAT32 disk utility
- Thread starter yellowscreen
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Just to clarify, if you pick that MS-DOS option others mentioned in Disk Utility, that is FAT32.
Happy for you.
Kindly add the usual "RESOLVED" to the title of your thread so others know it.
Regards.
but why is FAT32 greyed out and not available? if MS-DOS FAT is fat32 then why there is a seperate FAT32 (greyed out) option?
I need to use a FAT32 formatted SD Card in another device and using regular MS-DOS FAT erase option on Mac doesnt seem to work.
![Screenshot 2019-09-29 at 12.49.24.png]( "Screenshot 2019-09-29 at 12.49.24.png")
I need to use a FAT32 formatted SD Card in another device and using regular MS-DOS FAT erase option on Mac doesnt seem to work.
My experience was until now
1) MS-DOS (FAT) was always FAT 32, although not indicated as such in Disk Utility.
2) Often there were 2 indications instead of one. For instance using a third part NTFS tool to access my BootCamp from my MacOS side like Tuxera NTFS, there appeared in Disk Utility 2 entries „Tuxera NTFS“.
I believe you should not worry about the greyed out position.
I never had when entring „MS-DOT (FAT)“ in Disk Utility
FAT 16 but always FAT 32.
My knowledge is not deep enough to be sure but yes, it certainly is possible.
However, as already said FAT16 was never an option in my different Dusk Utilities from Snow Leopard until my present MacOS.
Therefore he should not worry regarding his need to format memory cards with FAT 32.
I would ignore the grayed out entry.
Latest version of Mac OS.(Mojave 10.14.6)
In the end,I used SD Card Formatter by Tuxera (free) and easily formated the SD card with FAT32.
I can confirm the MS-DOS (FAT) option on Mac Disk Utility IS NOT the same as FAT32,as I wasn't able to use the card formated that way in a device that required FAT32.using SD CARD FORMATTER app solved the issue.
I'm pretty sure it is. Here is a USB key I formatted yesterday to copy some music to my car.
It may be you need to select Master Boot Record as the formatting scheme to get it to work with your device.
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It is FAT32 but I had a similar issue before as well on a particular device. I had to erase the media to a raw unformatted/non-partitioned state with gparted, then formatting to MS-DOS (FAT) in macOS worked as expected. Nothing else worked for me. I‘m not sure what causes this, but I was disappointed that the Disk Utility couldn’t ”get ‘er done”. macOS probably could have accomplished the same result if I had used the terminal instead.
It kind of makes me feel like the Disk Utility does a “Quick” format, as opposed to what ever happens during a non-quick format in WIN. I’m not sure what really happens, but in my mind, the media has some issue that can only be corrected with a more aggressive approach than Disk Utility’s standard tool routine.
Regardless.... It is FAT32
It kind of makes me feel like the Disk Utility does a “Quick” format, as opposed to what ever happens during a non-quick format in WIN. I’m not sure what really happens, but in my mind, the media has some issue that can only be corrected with a more aggressive approach than Disk Utility’s standard tool routine.
Regardless.... It is FAT32
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well in my case it was not the same.as I said,I needed a USB drive formatted with FAT32 specifically and using MS-DOS(FAT) the device wouldn't even detect it,until I used the SD Format App and specifically selected FAT32 then it worked.
Also,why are there both MS-DOS (FAT) and MS-DOS (FAT32) options in latest MAC OS (see screen shot I posted above) if MS-DOS (FAT) is the same as FAT32?? makes zero sense.so there must be a difference.
I suspect it’s because you have a 3rd party package installed with a filesystem extension that causes this.
no.
I installed the third party software only after seeing this problem and as a desperate attempt to solve the issue.
Yes, but did you see both the MS-DOS (FAT32) & MS-DOS (FAT) option in the disk utility app on a plain vanilla macOS install? macOS does not include both entry’s by default. MS-DOS (FAT) IS FAT32 so it would be redundant.
What macOS version are you on? My screenshots in post #15 are from Mojave and that is how I remember DU looking as far back as I recall.
the screenshot I posted above is prior to installing any format utility or any software of that sort.just plain Mac OS Mojave.
If you search the web there are similar posts from other people facing similar issues.(greyed out FAT32 and MS-DOS (FAT) option being incompatible with FAT32.
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Mojave 10.14.6 as mentioned above.
What's the best way to get "SD Card Formatter by Tuxera"?
I found this - is this what you used? Is this safe to use? Wikipedia suggests SD Card Association is real and their sdcard.org is their domain... Safari doesn't show a certificate for the url which makes me uncomfortable... could be a man-in-the-middle attack here...
SD Memory Card Formatter for Mac Download | SD Association
www.sdcard.org
Edit: Ok, the downloaded installer was properly signed in 2016 and has Apple as the root certificate, so presumably if this were malware Apple would have shut it down by now... or does signing not work that way?
Edit 2x: This program appears to lack any way of specifying what format it'll use... do I just trust it'll use FAT32?
Edit 3x: Doesn't seem to matter - the program spat out this error message and appears to have deleted nothing. I think it's time to contact the manufacturer and ask about warranty/return/refund...
Code:
[ERROR] Invalid end of sector signature: 0x0004
[ERROR] exfat_check_validate_boot_sector returned error: 22 (Invalid argument)
[ERROR] Initializing cached values failed: 22 (Invalid argument)
[ERROR] Generated invalid volume. exfat_volume_create returned: 22 (Invalid argument)
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