How To Format And Use a USB Flash Drive On Your Mac

You can use pretty much any USB flash drive with your Mac. But be sure to buy one with the right connection type, either USB-A or USB-C, or get one that has both. Most drives are preformatted for Windows, so you probably want to reformat it for your Mac. You can add and remove files from a USB flash drive using the Finder. Be sure to eject the drive first before phsyically disconnecting it.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use a USB Flash Drive with your Mac.
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So you can use a USB flash drive like this one as external storage for your Mac to store files, archive things, or transfer between Macs or between Macs and Windows computers. First you want to make sure you have a USB drive that will work with your Mac. Older Macs use USBA which is this rectangular connection you see here. Newer Macs use a use a smaller USBC connector. Now this device actually slides so it will have USBC coming out the other end. You can see how that looks different. So you want to make sure you get the right connection for the Mac that you have or get a flash drive like this one that has both connections. 
If you're mismatched you're going to need an adapter. For instance if you have an older USBA drive then you can simply use a USB Hub to connect it or get a converter. But these things are pretty cheap so a lot of times it may just be worthwhile to just buy a new one that fits your current Mac.
So once you plug the drive in you should see it appear in a number of places. In any Finder window it should appear on the left under Locations. If you see nothing under Locations like that move your cursor over the word Locations and to the right you should see a Show button and then it will show everything there. In this case I have five locations. The first one is my main computer level. The second one is my internal hard drive. Then I have two external hard drives. Finally there's the USB drive that I've just plugged in. 
You'll also see it here on the Desktop. Now if you don't see the drive appear on the Desktop it could be that you have that option turned off. Go to Finder, Preferences, and then go to General, and then look for External Disks under Show these items on the desktop. I prefer not to have those shown on the desktop but a lot of people do. Here you can see my two external drives plus the USB flash drive. 
You can also see the drives that are attached by going to the main computer level. I showed you here there's a link to it right there. You could also choose Go and then Computer to go to the same location and there you'll see the drive. To see the contents on the drive all you need to do is select anyone of these. I could double click on this one. I could double click here and I could just select this one here in the Finder and it will show me what's on the drive. In this case there are no files there.
Now I can move files there just like I can to a folder that's on my internal drive. All I need to do is Drag and Drop. So, for instance, I could go to my Documents folder and I could select a file in here and drag that onto the icon there on the desktop or I can drag it onto the listing here in the sidebar. Either way will put it there. If I go to look at the contents now I'll see that file is there. Also if I leave this window open but open up a new Finder window I can navigate to another location here and drag a file there as well.
Notice that since it's a separate drive dragging and dropping automatically makes a copy. It won't remove the file from the first drive to put it onto the second drive. It copies it there. That's a safety precaution. But if you wanted to actually have it move the file you can drag it, and as you're dragging you could see the cursor there has a little green plus arrow. But if I hold the Command key down that goes away. Now that file is going to be moved. You'll see you even get a warning here because that file happens to be iCloud Drive and it will give me a warning saying this is going to take it off of iCloud Drive if I move it and not copy it to the USB flash drive.
To delete files from the flash drive you can do it just like you do with files on your internal drive. You can drag them to the Trashcan in the Dock or you can select them and use File and then Move to Trash, Command Delete is the shortcut for that. However, note that when you move something to the Trash it's still in the trash. So you're not going to get back any space on the drive. Throwing a lot of files into the trash won't free up space. What you need to do then is go to the Trash, Control click on it and choose Empty Trash or in the Finder go to Finder and choose Trash. That will remove all the files in the trash across all of your different drives. So any internal drive files that were put into the trash will also be deleted at that point.
If you want to just delete the file immediately you can select it. Notice if I go to File, Move to Trash but I hold the Option key down it changes to Delete Immediately. The shortcut would just be Option Command Delete. That  will skip the Trash for those files and get rid of them. 
So when you first get a USB Flash Drive you probably want to format it or at least check the formatting. To do that on the Mac run Disk Utility. I'm going to use Spotlight, Command Space, and search for Disk Utility and run that app. Then I'm going to see it here on the left. What I want to do is change the view from Show Only Volumes to Show All Devices. Once I do that I could clearly see the device itself instead of just the volume on it. By selecting the device itself I have the most options and I can actually reformat it rather than just erasing it.
To Reformat it you use the Erase button here and then you can select a new name for the drive and also a format. There are many different formats to choose from. APFS is the current Apple format and it's been around for a couple of years now. MAC OS Extended is the older format. So if you need to use this drive on an older Mac running a system prior to macOS Mojave then you may want to select this one. Otherwise APFS is fine. If you choose Encrypted you'll be asked to provide a password. Then the only way to access the files on this drive would be to use that password. Be sure to remember that password because if you forget it those files are gone forever!
Now if you want to use this drive on your Mac and also on Windows computers then you need to choose ExFat or FAT. Fat is an older format for Windows. Just about any Windows machine in operation now can read ExFAT so that's probably fine. It's easy these days to share files using Cloud services or Networking. So using USB flash drives to transfer files from one machine to the other isn't as common as it used to be. So for most users if you're just using the drive on a Mac use APFS or if you have to MAC OS Extended.
Now when you buy a new flash drive they usually come formatted for Windows by default. The manufacturers just assume that you're going to have Windows. So if you're only going to use it on Macs you probably want to reformat it for Macs before you do anything with it. Now while you can name your drive when you erase it and reformat it you can also rename it in the Finder. So I can select the drive here at the computer level or on the desktop and then hit the Return key to rename the drive. Just like I would rename a file.
Now when you want to remove your USB flash drive from your Mac it's important to tell your Mac you're going to do that first. You can do that here in the Finder sidebar. You can see a little eject button next to all my external drives. So I can simply click that. Also if you Control click on the icon here in the Finder or here on the desktop you've got the option to Eject from there. Another location is with the drive selected either here or here you can go to File and then Eject and notice that the keyboard shortcut is simply Command E. If you do that make sure that the icon completely disappears and the sidebar item is gone before you physically remove it from the computer.

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Format And Use a USB Flash Drive On Your Mac”

Jimmy

5 years ago

Gary A Very helpful lesson Much appreciated

Larry

There is no option to format a usb drive. Catalina on a macbook air purchased in 2013. Why is so incredibly complicated to format a usb drive? pissed off!!

Gary Rosenzweig

Larry: What do you mean? There is. That's what I am showing in this video.

I finally figured out that erase means format without actually using the word "format". Perhaps using the word FORMAT would make easier it to understand. I am still not completely sure the USB drive is formatted.

Larry: Erasing will erase the drive and set it up using the format you selected. I suppose if they used "format" then some people would think it meant to reformat the drive and somehow maintain the data. Erase is the safer term.

Maynard Schweigert

I have a SanDick MP3 player that will not even show up as an attached device. Can it still be formatted by other means.

Maynard: So you don't see it in Disk Utility? Then there is nothing you can do. You can try to contact the maker to see if they offer any sort of support or help.

Comments Closed.

How To Format And Use a USB Flash Drive On Your Mac

Comments: 7 Responses to “How To Format And Use a USB Flash Drive On Your Mac”

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