USB Flash Drive formatting

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I have a flash drive thats currently on MS-DOS and I want to make it hfs+. I plugged it in my computer and opened disk utility. I selected it, went to the erase tab, and set the format as mac os extended (journaled). i pressed erase and the progress bar goes half way, but gets stuck at "formatting disk5s2 as Mac OS Extended (journaled) with name Untitled". after a long time, it says disk erase failed. Disk Erase failed with error: File system formatter failed. can anyone help me?


flashdriveformatting.png
 
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Just leave it FAT32. It won't hurt anything, and converting it means you can't easily share files.
 
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i want to use the flash drive as an operating system (leo 911). you have to use carbon copy cloner to copy of the OS files but ccc needs hfs+ formatting.
 

chscag

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Use Disk Utility to verify and repair the flash drive. If it won't do the verify and repair, or can't get through the entire drive, it's time to buy a new one.

4 Gb flash drives are selling for less than $10 in some places.

Regards.
 
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i already verified and repaired it. again, i can make it ms-dos but i can not make it any mac os. thats your solution? buy another flash drive?
 
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bumppppp......... also, i was able to format a different flash drive to mac os extended

i already verified and repaired it. again, i can make it ms-dos but i can not make it any mac os. thats your solution? buy another flash drive?

If you formatted another drive ok and you couldnt this one, yes i think that is a solution, to buy another. Seems there is something wrong with it ...

Or maybe if you have a windows machine format it FAT32 on that machine then retry it on your Mac. This worked for me once, but the drive was on its way out BC i couldnt do anything with it down the track a little

Cheers
 

chscag

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i already verified and repaired it. again, i can make it ms-dos but i can not make it any mac os. thats your solution? buy another flash drive?

First of all.... Flash drives do not take well to formatting after the initial factory format. Formatting a flash drive with Disk Utility will render it useless for use on a PC because DU creates a small 200 MB protective partition in addition to the formatting. Windows can only read the first 200 MB, the remainder of the drive is not read.

Your flash drive has seen "better days". If it can not be formatted with DU then either use it only for the PC or simply buy another.

Regards.
 

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