How to Format SanDisk USB to exFAT Windows 10,8,7?

Introduction of exFAT

exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) is a relative new file system that was first introduced to us in 2006. It is optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards. On one hand, this file system makes up for the limit of FAT32, maximum file 4GB in size. That is to say, you can store the single file larger than 4GB on a partition with exFAT file system. On the other hand, the exFAT works well with large-sized partition up to 8TB in size while FAT32 can only work with a partition up to 2TB in Windows.

Besides, it is more compatible than NTFS. Mac OS X offers full read-write support for exFAT and it can be accessed on Linux after installing some additional software. And it also works on some other devices like digital cameras that don’t support NTFS. In a nutshell, the exFAT achieves a great balance between FAT32 and NTFS and is suitable for use on various removable memory cards and USB flash drives.

Need to format SanDisk USB to exFAT

If you purchased a new SanDisk USB with FAT32 file system, and want to copy a single file larger than 4GB to it. Windows may notice you that “File is too large for destination file system”. However, exFAT can broke the limitation of 4GB for a single file. So, you’d better format your USB drive to exFAT to broke the limitation of 4GB for Windows 10/8/7 or Mac. Compare with FAT32, exFAT has faster transfer speed and it keeps the high compatibility with many operating systems and devices. So, formatting SanDisk USB to exFAT in Windows/Mac can be your best choice.

How to format SanDisk USB to exFAT in Windows 10/8/7?

How to format SanDisk USB to exFAT in Windows? Here provides you with two methods to finish this operation.

Method 1. Format SanDisk USB to exFAT in Windows by Diskpart

First, connect your USB drive to your computer and make sure it can be detected.

1. Run diskpart as administrator: press Win+R to open Run dialogue and input diskpart, then hit on Enter.

2. Type list disk and press Enter.

3. Type select disk n and press Enter (where n is the number of your USB drive).

4. Type list partition and press Enter.

5. Type select partition # and press Enter (where # is the number of the partition on flash drive).

6. Type format fs=exfat and press Enter. 

7. Type exit and press Enter.

However, sometimes you may find Windows was unable to complete the format on USB flash drive, or Command Prompt takes too long in formatting your removable device to exFAT, or you just cannot format USB to exFAT. In this case, you can turn to a third party SanDisk format utility.

Method 2. Format SanDisk USB to exFAT in Windows via free partition manager

The free partition manager named AOMEI Partition Assistant can be a great alternative when you cannot format SanDisk USB flash drive to exFAT through Windows native tools. It is able to format drive to exFAT in all editions of Windows10/8/8.1/7, as well as Windows Vista and Windows XP (both 32-bit and 64-bit). The following example shows you how to format SanDisk USB to exFAT in Windows 7. Let’s see the specific steps：

First of all, connect your USB drive to your computer and make sure it can be detected.

Step 1. Download, install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right click the partition on your USB Drive and select “Format Partition”.

Step 2. In the pop-up window, choose “exFAT” from drop-down menu next to “File System”. You also can specify “Cluster Size” under file system if you need to.

Step 3. Next, it will go back to the main interface. Preview the virtual result and click “Apply”>”Proceed” after your confirmation.

If your USB drive shows up as Unallocated space, you can right click it and select “Create Partition”. In this way, you can directly create a exFAT partition. This freeware can also help finish some other tough disk formatting tasks, like formatting 2TB hard drive to FAT32, converting FAT32 and NTFS file systems without formatting, formatting corrupted hard drive, etc.

Conclusion

Follow these simple steps, you can easily and effectively format SanDisk USB to exFAT file system. AOMEI Partition Assistant can be the best USB format tool. Besides formatting partition, it also has many other powerful functions like resize/move/delete/copy partition, wipe hard drive, convert to NTFS, disk copy, rebuild MBR and so on.

 If you need to migrate OS from MBR disk to GPT SSD or HDD, allocate free space from one partition to another one, recover lost partition, convert dynamic disk to basic one without deleting volumes, you can upgrade it to AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro.