Once the formatting is done, you can proceed and load your USB drive with the movies and videos you would like to show on your TV and start watching. Related Article: An updated guide to USB: From USB 1 to USB C to USB 4 Format a USB Drive with Mac OS # Click OK to continue then also click OK at the Format Complete message.Click the Close button to close the FORMAT device name (drive letter) window.With that done, your USB drive should be formatted and ready to work on your TV. Format USB Drive with Windows OS #Ĭonnect the USB Device to your Windows computer.Click Start and then click My Computer (This PC).In the My Computer (This PC) window, right-click on the drive icon in which the USB drive appears.From the resulting drop-down menu, click Format.Under File system, click the drop-down arrow and select FAT32 and then click the Start button.Ī WARNING message will appear. The process is pretty straight forward on Mac and Windows. So once you know the USB format you should use, now is the time to format your USB drive.

You can check the file system formats that your TV Supports from the manufacturer’s website or support forums online. Hisense: NTFS, FAT32, and FAT are supported. Sony: FAT, FAT32, and exFAT are supported. Roku TVs such as TCLs and Hisense support USB drives that are formatted with the FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, and HFS+ file systems.įor LG Smart TVs: FAT32 and NTFS are supported. Failure to do so means your TV won’t be able to read media off your flash disk or portable hard drive.įor instance Samsung QLED and SUHD TVs support FAT, exFAT, and NTFS file systems while their Full HD TVs support NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32. So you need to make sure that your flash disk is formatted with the file system that your TV supports. Various TVs support different File system formats for USB drives. If you aren’t sure about what format to use, do a Google search of your TV name, model, and add the word ‘manual.’ This will help to tell you the format your TV uses. The ExFAT format also works when the videos you are going to show on the TV via the USB drive is larger than 4GB. The FAT32 USB format is the most common format supported by TVs, although recent TVs support the ExFAT format.

Format usb drive for mac and windows