Windows won't recognise USB memory stick after formatting on a mac

[markdelta]

I have a memory stick that I use to transport work from the macs at college to y windows pc at home, this used to work fine.

I gave the stick to my friend at college to use and I think he didn't eject it properly so the mac was having problems with it. To solve this I erased and formatted it on the mac and it works again - on mac.

Windows pcs (I've tried two) don't even detect that it has been inserted.

A new memory stick would be cheap but at least I'd like to stop this happening again!

 

[unksol]

did you check the filesystem the Mac used during the format? if its not FAT32 or NTFS windows can't read it.

 

[COLGeek]

This is because the Mac formatted with its native filesystem and not one that Windows can recognize. Format it in the PC with FAT32 and then both system types will be able to access the device.