If you are having trouble formatting a drive, it may be because the drive is not recognized by Windows Disk Management. To troubleshoot this issue, first try selecting the drive in the Windows Explorer and then clicking on the Properties button. If the drive is not recognized by Disk Management, you may need to format it or add it to a drives list in order to use it with Windows.

If you are unable to format or partition your external hard drive using the built-in apps offered by Microsoft and Apple, then you may want to try and format the drive directly using command line. If you’re comfortable using command line, then you may want to check out our guide on how to format external hard drives to FAT32.

If your computer does not recognize your external hard drive, this guide may be useful.

If you’re having trouble formatting or partitioning your hard drive, consider using a specialized hard drive formatting utility. These utilities often times are more effective than the built-in options that Windows and OS X offer. ..

EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition

EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition is an excellent utility for managing partitions, copying partitions, and creating boot disks. ..

This Windows app is designed to help you manage your hard drives more efficiently. It offers several options and features that are more intuitive than the built-in Windows Disk Management function.

You can resize or move partitions, merge partitions, check partitions, wipe partitions, format partitions and change the label. If you need to perform some more advanced tasks like convert the partition or clone it, you’ll have to upgrade to the paid version.

MiniTool Partition Wizard

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free is a free disk partitioning and formatting utility that is simple to use and effective. The interface is quite straightforward and the software is excellent at making complex formatting options simple. ..

The WD My Passport is a Windows 10-compatible hard drive that supports all file system formats, UEFI and EFI boot, MBR and GPT disks, RAID storage, and SSDs. You can use it to extend your system partition, migrate your OS from a standard HDD to a SSD, convert file system, and lots more.

Paragon Partition Manager Free

This utility is great for Windows 10 users who want a partition manager that can backup and recover their disks, as well as copy disks. It also has a lot of features, such as the ability to resize partitions and create new ones.

I really like the ease of use and wizardry of Paragon. It makes making changes to the software a breeze, and it supports larger drives. The paid version also has more features.

AOMEI Partition Assistant

The best partition manager is AOMEI Partition Assistant. It has all the same features as the other programs mentioned above, and it also has a free version. ..

The app is regularly updated and supports Windows 10. Some options will be available in the free version while others will require the paid version. This is true for all of the programs mentioned above. If you only need to perform a one-time task and one program doesn’t work for you, I suggest trying another one before making any purchase.

HP Disk Storage Format Utility

The HP Disk Storage Formatter is a simple, effective formatting utility that can be used with USB devices.

Windows and OS X offer a variety of formatting utilities, but there may be cases when they will not format a hard drive correctly. The next option is to use a command line tool, but that’s more complex and not for everyone. Using the variety of hard drive formatting and partitioning utilities featured in this post, you should have no problems getting hard drives or even USB flash drives formatted correctly.