Summary: This blog tells you various ways to format your USB Drive. Learn how you can format your USB Drive to FAT/ FAT32/ NTFS/ ex-FAT using Windows Explorer or Command Prompt. Also, learn how you can recover your files after formatting your USB Drive.
USB flash drives are the little stick-like devices that we carry along in our pockets as portable external storage. But these little devices pack quite a punch; they can double up as your mobile movie library, photo collection, backup drive, OS boot volume, or just a way to transfer stuff from one computer to another. Each time you wish to use them for a unique purpose, it requires cleaning them and sometimes even formatting them to a file system suited to the target environment. Formatting is also a good way to rid the memory stick of unwanted errors or virus/malware programs.
One important thing to remember is always taking a backup of your data before beginning the formatting a USB drive procedure.
When it comes to formatting a USB drive, which format should you go for – FAT or NTFS? Or any other? Moreover, how can you change the format of your USB drive from FAT to NTFS to exFAT or FAT32? Let’s answer these questions one at a time.
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When it comes to formatting a USB drive, which format should you go for – FAT or NTFS? Or any other? Moreover, how can you change the format size of your USB drive from FAT to NTFS to exFAT or FAT32? Let’s answer these questions one at a time.
In most Windows systems, while formatting a USB 4 file system choices are presented to you – NTFS, FAT, FAT32 or exFAT. You should choose one that suits your USB purpose as well as target environment. Additionally, here are the benefits of each of these file systems to help you make your choice.
If you select NTFS file system, you get:
Note: For USB flash drives with capacity larger than 32GB, FAT / FAT32 formatting option is not available.
If you select FAT or FAT32 file system:
If you select exFAT file system, you get:
So if you’re USB flash drive which has a capacity greater than 32GB, you should select NTFS or exFAT. Other than that, you should choose the format that suits your work. For example, if you use the USB on multiple operating systems, going for FAT would be better.
FAT or FAT 32 file system is the option selected by default for formatting a USB flash drive on Windows XP. FAT or FAT32 is also the default file system most music players in cars recognise. So if on plugging your USB into your car’s music player you’ve faced an error saying – “cannot read”, check its file system and change it.
Step 1: Plug in the memory stick into your computer and allow it to be detected. Once it is recognised, you should see an Autoplay dialogue box pop up asking you to choose the next action. If it doesn’t appear, you can open My Computer and see if the USB is detected as a newly mounted volume. You can also find the USB under Disk Drives in Device Manager (right-click on My Computer -> Manage).
Step 2: Right-click on the USB drive shown in My Computer and select “Format”. This will open a dialogue box displaying the formatting options.
Step 3: Select the desired file system from NTFS, FAT, FAT32 or exFAT from the “File System” drop-down, then punch in the name that you wish to assign to the USB drive under “Volume label” and also select a “Format option”.
Step 4: Once you’ve made sure all options are correct, and you have a backup of the important data on the USB, click on “Start” to initiate the process. When prompted, click on “Ok” to confirm that you wish to erase the data on the drive and format it.
Step 1: Plug in the memory stick into your computer and allow it to be detected.
Step 2: Open Command Prompt (Start -> Accessories -> Command Prompt or Start -> Run -> type “cmd” -> Enter)
Step 3 : Supposing your USB drive is assigned the letter “E”: type the following command in the Command Prompt:
For FAT: format E: /fs:FAT
For FAT32: format E: /fs:FAT32
For NTFS: format E: /fs:NTFS
For exFAT: format E: /fs:EXFAT
Step 4 : When prompted, press Y (for Yes) or N (for No) to continue or stop the formatting.
When formatting to NTFS file system, you need to remember to enable the “removal policy” of the USB to the “better performance” option. Here’s how to do this:
The best possible solution to go for will be to download and run Stellar Photo Recovery Software. The added benefit of keeping Stellar Photo Recovery Software in your system is that you can take a backup of your entire drive. The top menu bar of the main screen section of the software includes a ‘Create Image‘ option which is used to create an image of your entire drive. This image can be used as a backup for recovering data at a later stage. To recover back your multimedia files, if lost accidentally, you can try the demo version of the software absolutely free:
Hope our pointers above will help you the next time you need to format your memory stick. Always remember to backup your data before beginning the formatting process and choose a file system that suits your requirement. However, if you want to recover data from a corrupt or inaccessible USB drive, read our next post.
Q1: How to format USB flash drive?
In most Windows systems while formatting a USB Stick/Flash Drive, file system choices are presented to you – NTFS, FAT, FAT32 or exFAT. FAT or FAT 32 file system is the option selected by default for formatting a USB flash drive. The two ways in which you can format your USB Flash Drive are:
Q2: How to Recover Data after formatting USB flash drive using FAT/FAT32/NTFS/exFAT?
Ideally, you should take a back-up of your data before formatting. But sometimes, even after all the precautions, you end up losing your data. In such cases, to recover multimedia files from formatted USB flash drive/stick, you should try using a recovery software as a sure shot solution. Click here to know more.
Sumona is a tech blogger, avid photographer, & technogeek with vast experience in writing about media file recovery tips and tutorials. She has over 10 years of experience in media file recovery/media file repair technology. She is passionate about Photography, Creative Designing, Music, and Exploring lesser-known destinations.
Directions are easy. But nothing happens. Nothing at all from the command prompt. Mystified.
Can you please share the command output so that we can assist.
Thanks!
Hello
All the responses I’ve browsed thru DO NOT address the FAR32 -> NTFS conversion
Mind you, I know how to use the command line option, format GUI, System utilities, 3rd party partition utilities.
All have the same result -> the conversion fail with or without error message.
I have try SDHC, SDXC 8G or 16G with the same result.
Changing USB ports, USB2 and 3.
The format or conversion will fail BUT I can go back to the FAT32 or ExFAT
What is the secret here?
Thanks,
Hi Adrian, There are some disadvantages of NTFS usage. However, you can try devmgmt.msc option & try to change your concerbed drive to “Optimize for performance” from the Disk Drives list. Let me know, how it results concerbed =concerned.
Hello,
I have an usb stick with 8GB
when formatting to FAT i got this error
The volume is too big for FAT16/12.
Format failed.
How can i make it FAT i don’t need FAT32 or FAT16 i need FAT
Thank you
Dear Tim, The FAT file allocation system is named for its method of organization, the file allocation table, which resides at the beginning of the volume. There is no organization to the FAT folder structure. When you need to format your USB to FAT/FAT16 because your device (like a DVD player or digital decoder etc) only support FAT file systems. But there is no option FAT on format window, so you cant change it to FAT. So why it happened? Because your USB size is more than MAX Volume size of FAT.
1.FAT/FAT16: Max volume size 4GB, Max file size 2GB.
2.FAT32: Max volume size 2TB, Max file size 4GB.
3.exFAT: Max volume size 128PB, Max file size 16EB.
It means if your USB flash drive is 8GB or more, it will not support the FAT format.
how to format SD card to fat32 on mac?
Hello Anna, Please follow the below steps:
1. Connect the SD card to Mac by external card reader.
2. Open disk utility on Mac computer
3. Find the SD card in the left if the window. It will named something like no name or untitled
4. Click erase tab in the middle of the window
5. Next click format dropdown menu. Select FAT 32 if the card is 32 GB or smaller
6. A message window will appear Click erase.
Now the computer will delete the contents of you SD card and format it.
Greetings
i have a samsung evo 128GB sd card it is in exFAT format i had bought today but the speed written on it 43mb/s but getting only 334kb/sec please any one suggest method or software to boost up the speed or the sd card is damaged
please reply
Hello Dio,
Thanks for contacting Stellar Data Recovery
Speed generally does not depend on the format. However, you can try connecting card directly to the port-card. Also, you can go to Start / My Computer and then on the card icon, click the right mouse button, then click on Properties/Tools/Error Check and Repair.
If I format my 2.0 flash drive to Exfat, will I be able to load photos to it from a PC and then give it to someone to use with a MAC?
Hello Karen,
Macs offer full read-write support for exFAT.
my 16gb sd card is compressed to 31mb and it while formatting in cmd it shows it is too small
and I tried one more thing is disk part but while doing this partition doesn’t happening….
what is the solution for it?
Please perform the scan with the demo version of Stellar Photo Recovery software to check the possibility of recovery.
Once you are satisfied with the preview shown in the demo version then you can purchase the software to recover the data.
Hello, Good advice. Unfortunately, I have sd card xfat formatted that cannot be formatted as fat32. After formatting, it even keeps the old files untouched.
I’m using windows 10.
Hello Javier,
Thanks for the feedback. Do you want to recover data from SD Card?
Please let us know
I have 5 , 258gb flash drives that are exfat. It does not allow me to reformat to FAT32 for music. Per what I hav e read above, it sounds like I will have to put my 144 CDs on several 32gb flash drives to store all of them. Is this correct? Why am I unable to get all of my CDs on a single flash drive?
Hello Henry,
Thanks for contacting Stellar Data Recovery!
Please take the backup of your data on 258 GB flash drive then you may try to reformat it in FAT32 using command prompt.
If you wish to recover the deleted or lost data then we have data recovery software to recover the files.
Please feel free to get back to us for any further query.