Formatting a USB Stick on Macbook

[NamJam]

I am having a Pioneer car stereo which can read the files from the USB Stick but the condition is that the USB Stick should formatted with MS DOS (FAT). Now the problem is that I am having a Windows XP on my macbook by using the Bootcamp. So when I am formatting the usb stick from the DOS then also actual stick remains formatted with Mac Os Extended. And got an error after inserting the same stick in the player as Stick has the wrong format. How can i make my usb stick working on this player, I mean how should i format my usb stick from macbook?

[Pugsly]

After reading your query it seems like you have not mentioned your problem properly. Actually I just want to tell you that one pen drive or a disk cannot have two different file partitions. So either your pen drive can have FAT partition or mac one. Possibly your usb stick must be having Mac partition which is not readable by your pioneer stereo player. I think best way to solve this problem would be formatting your usb stick from the computer system which only has windows os installed on it.

[Regina]

Though I have never used the Mac OS X due to which I am not personally aware of this problem but I have googled a bit about this problem and have found that this kind of problems can be solved by using the Disk Utility which seems to be really working for many mac users. I suggest you to use the same program for formatting your usb stick after which it might get read by your Pioneer player.

[Paxton]

I am an experienced user of Mac OS X and Regina have suggested the right way by which your problem can get solved. Actually you have to launch the Disk Utility application which would be located in an Applications / Utilities, and then reformat your USB drive. Here you have to choose the Mac OS if you use this key on a Mac, or MS DOS to use this key either Mac or PC. I guess you must choose the MS DOS which would formatting your usb stick with the FAT partition.

[Gonzo]

If a USB - no hard drive can be formatted using the disk utility to format the backup program helps over time machine. There are a great trick, what Disk Utility can not see that makes Time Machine. Just start Time Machine and select the new drive as a backup. This hard drive is listed as not formatted, and emphatic reformatting. Great! We follow the recommendation and get a formatted hard drive is now usable for us.

[Venator]

If you use "Time Machine" is in fact strongly recommended to have an external hard drive very, very large, because with the incremental backup, said disk space. It is obvious that the higher your external drive, the more you can "turn back time." When the disc is full, "Time Machine deletes older backups etc...It is of course possible to choose only one partition on a hard drive and not all that hard .... this will avoid adding a second hard drive if you already have a partition large enough and available for "Time Machine", but again it is STRONGLY recommended to use "Time Machine" on a disc External hard, because if "Time Machine" is used on the same single hard disk, then the backup will no longer be of any use if the hard drive just to fail!