Format Jump Drives For Windows & Mac Compatibility

A problem I ran into a lot in the past was formatting a jump drive that was compatible with Microsoft Windows. Eventually I resorted to using Boot Camp to boot into Windows and would reformat the drive there. Fortunately I recently came upon how you're supposed to format Windows compatible jump drives in Leopard.

Step 1: Plug in the jump drive and open Disk Utility.app. (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app)

Step 2: Select the jump drive in the sources column on the left. (Do not select the indented portion.)



Step 3: From the top half of the window, select "Partition".



Step 4: Change "Volume Scheme" to your desired number of partitions.



Step 5: Enter in a name for your partition(s).



Step 6: Change "Format" of each of your partitions to "MS-DOS (FAT)".



Step 7: Click on the "Options…" button under the partition arrangement section.



Step 8: Select "Master Boot Record" from the window that appears.



Step 9: Click the "Apply" button and confirm your new partitions. (If you get an error saying that the disk cannot be ejected, eject the disk in Finder then reinsert it.)

That's it! You should now be able to use that jump drive on both Windows and Mac.