Format USB Flash Drive The macOS Sierra installer takes up 5.1GB of space on the USB flash drive, so you will need a flash drive with a capacity of 8GB or greater. Note: If the flash drive is mounted under “/Volumes” successfully when you plug it in, you can skip the following steps to reformat the flash drive. Step 5: Clicking Yes button will open Format Drive for Mac dialog box where you need to type a name for the drive. Since we are preparing Sierra bootable USB, let’s name the drive as Sierra install drive. When you see the warning message again, click Yes button to continue and format the drive for Mac.
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Apple updates its macOS around this time of the year. This year, the latest version of macOS has been named Mojave. Currently available for all supported Mac machines, the macOS Mojave is the latest version of macOS.
macOS Mojave bootable USB from Windows 10/8/7 PC
The macOS Mojave bootable USB can be prepared on a Mac without the help of third-party tools, just like how Windows bootable USB can be prepared from Command Prompt. However, if your Mac device is not bootable, you can prepare macOS Mojave bootable USB right from Windows PC as well.
In this guide, we will see how to create macOS Mojave bootable USB drive on a PC running Windows 10, Windows 8 or Windows 7.
What you will need:
# macOS Mojave DMG file
# A USB flash drive with at least 16 GB of storage
# A PC running Windows 10, Windows 8 or Windows 7
# Trial copy of TransMac (no need to download now)
Once you have all items mentioned above, you can make macOS Mojave bootable USB on a Windows PC. In this guide, we’re creating macOS Mojave bootable USB on Windows 10, but you can use the same procedure on Windows 8 and Windows 7 as well.
Guide to prepare macOS Sierra bootable install USB on Windows 10/8/7
NOTE: The guide was originally written to prepare macOS Sierra bootable USB but it works with the latest macOS Mojave as well.
Step 1: Connect a USB drive with at least 16 GB of storage space to your Windows PC and move all data from USB drive to a safe place as the drive will be erased while preparing macOS Mojave bootable USB.
Step 2: Visit this page of TransMac and download the latest version of TransMac software on your PC. TransMac is a paid software but the 15-day trial copy can be used to prepare bootable USB without any issues. That said, if you often need to prepare macOS bootable USB from Windows, you should go ahead and buy the software.
Once the TransMac is downloaded, double-click on the setup file to run the installer and get it installed on your PC.
![Drive Drive](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126276392/640978173.png)
Step 3: Run TransMac software as administrator. To do so, type TransMac in Start menu search box, right-click on TransMac entry in search results, and then click Run as administrator option. When you see the TransMac Trial dialog box, Click Run button.
Alternatively, you can navigate to TransMac entry in Start menu, right-click on it, and then click Run as administrator option.
Step 4: Once TransMac is launched, in the left pane of the program, you will see the connected USB drive that you want to use to prepare macOS Mojave bootable USB. Right-click on the USB drive and then click Format Disk for Mac option.
Click Yes button when you see the warning dialog box.
This is because, if you have been using a USB flash drive with Windows operating system, the USB drive is likely using MBR partition type. So we need to partition the USB drive with GPT partition first before transferring the DMG file to the USB drive.
Step 5: Clicking Yes button will open Format Drive for Mac dialog box where you need to type a name for the drive. Since we are preparing Mojave bootable USB, let’s name the drive as Mojave install drive.
When you see the warning message again, click Yes button to continue and format the drive for Mac.
Step 6: Once the format is done, right-click on the USB drive again, and then click Restore with disc image option.
Click Yes button when you see the following warning dialog box.
Step 7: Clicking the Yes button will open Restore Disk Image to Drive dialog box. Under Disk image to restore section, click the small button with drive icon on it (refer to the picture below) to browse to macOS Mojave DMG file. Select the DMG file and then click Open.
Finally, click OK button.
Step 8: When you see the warning dialog box, click the Yes button to begin preparing your macOS Sierra bootable USB. The bootable USB should be ready in about 30 minutes. In our test, the tool took close to 45 minutes, though.
Once the bootable USB of Mojave is ready, you can connect it to your Mac device and begin installing macOS Mojave from it. Good luck!
Summary
For Apple Mac users, there are two ways to format USB flash drive to FAT32, including Disk Utility and Terminal command line. Refer to detailed steps of using both tools for FAT32 format. Formatting would erase data completely, make sure that you have a data backup. Otherwise, you can only use data recovery software to recover data from a formatted USB drive.
How to Format a USB Flash Drive with Mac to FAT32
Many computer users who use a removable flash drive have the demand for formatting it to the FAT32 file system. Compare with the other commonly used NTFS file system on a flash drive, FAT32 has a compatibility advantage across many operating systems.
It's a universal format that is compatible with Mac OS X/macOS, Windows, Linux and DOS systems. So, if users anticipate using the flash drive with more than one operating system, they will definitely benefit from the FAT32 file system. For Apple Mac users, there are two ways to format a USB flash drive to FAT32, including Disk Utility and Terminal command line. Refer to detailed steps of using both tools for FAT32 format.
Method 1. Format FAT32 on Mac [Disk Utility]
To format USB to FAT32 with Disk Utility will erase all data on the flash drive, so before you doing so, please do remember to check whether you have saved useful data to another secure device in advance.
To format the USB drive to FAT32, follow the next steps:
Step 1. Connect the USB flash drive to your Mac computer.
Step 2.Go to Applications > Utilities > Double click and open Disk Utility.
Step 3. Select your USB flash drive on the sidebar, choose Erase.
Step 4. Rename the USB flash drive, choose the format as MS-DOS (FAT) for Format, Master Boot Record for Scheme. Then click Erase.
Wait for the process to complete, then you’ll get an empty new USB flash drive with FAT32 as the file system. You can reuse it for saving data again.
Method 2. Format FAT32 on Mac [Terminal Command Line]
The command line behavior does the same way to erase data with the Disk Utility. Again, create a backup before taking this action.
To format FAT32 with Terminal, follow the next steps:
Step 1. Connect your USB flash drive to your Mac computer.
Step 2. Hit cmd + space to run Spotlight, type: terminal and hit Enter.
3. Type:diskutil list and find out which disk is your USB drive. (In the below picture, you can see that /dev/disk2 is the USB drive)
4. Type: sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 MBRFormat /dev/disk2.
- sudo gives you user right.
- Diskutil calls disk utility program.
- eraseDisk commands to format.
- FAT32 sets the file system.
- MBRFormat tells disk utility to format with a Master Boot Record.
- /dev/disk2 is the location of the USB drive.
Wait for the process to complete. After this, you can type: diskutil list in command again to check if the formatting has been successful.
Complementary Data Recovery Tip
Formatting would erase data completely, make sure that you have a data backup. Otherwise, you can only use data recovery software to recover data from a formatted USB drive.
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard has both Windows and Mac versions, so it's the optimal choice for data recovery, no matter you're using a PC or Mac. If you're a Mac user, for example, it takes only a few clicks for the software to scan and display your formatted data. To guarantee an effective data recovery without spending money to no avail, you can install the Mac data recovery free version for the first trial. You can preview all the found data before the final recovery.
To recover data from a formatted FAT32 USB flash drive on Mac, follow the next steps:
Step 1. Correctly connect your USB flash drive to your Mac. Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac. Start selecting the flash drive and click Scan to let the software search lost files on it.
Step 2. After quick scan and deep scan, all files will be presented in the left pane in the scan results.
Step 3. Select files you want to recover and click Recover Now button. Don't save the recoverable files to the USB drive itself in case of data overwriting.