Search
  • For Individuals
      « Back
    • Windows Data Recovery

      Recovers lost or deleted Office documents, emails, presentations & multimedia files.

      Free Standard Professional Premium

    • Mac Data Recovery

      Recovers deleted files, photos, videos etc. on Mac.

      Free Standard Professional Premium

    • Photo Recovery

      Recover photos, videos, & audio files from all cameras and storage on Windows or Mac.

      Free Standard Professional Premium

    • Video Repair
    • Photo Repair
    • iPhone Data Recovery
  • For Business
      « Back
    • Email Repair & Converter

      Repair for Exchange Converter for EDB Converter for OST Converter for NSF Converter for OST MBOX Repair for Outlook

    • Database & File Repair

      Repair for MS SQL Repair for Access Repair for QuickBooks Software Repair for Excel Extractor for Windows Backup Repair for MySQL

    • Data Recovery & Erasure

      Data Recovery Professional Data Recovery Technician Mac Recovery for Technician Virtual Machine Recovery File Erasure Software Mobile Erasure Drive Erasure File Eraser Software File Eraser Software for Mac

    • Toolkit

      Exchange Toolkit Outlook Toolkit File Repair Toolkit MS SQL Toolkit Data Recovery Toolkit

    • Forensic

      Email Forensic Exchange Auditor Log Analyzer for MySQL Log Analyzer for MS SQL

  • Store
  • Partners
  • Services
  • Offers
  • Support

 

  • For Individuals
    DIY software for anyone who works with data.

    Windows Data Recovery Recovers lost or deleted Office documents, emails, presentations & multimedia files

    Free Standard Professional Premium

    Mac Data Recovery Especially for Mac users to recover deleted documents and multimedia files from macOS

    Free Standard Professional Premium

    Video Repair Windows Mac Repair multiple corrupt videos in one go. Supports MP4, MOV & other formats.

    StandardPremium

    Photo Recovery Windows Mac Recover photos, videos, & audio files from all cameras and storage on Windows or Mac.

    Standard Professional Premium

    iPhone Data Recovery Windows Mac Recover deleted photos, videos, contacts, messages etc. directly from iPhone & iPad

    Recover Erase Toolkit

    Photo Repair Windows Mac Repair multiple corrupt photos in one go. Supports JPEG & other formats.

    Standard Professional Premium


  • For Business
    • Email Repair
    • Email Converter
    • File Repair
    • Data Recovery & Erasure
    • Toolkit
    • Forensic

    Exchange Repair Repair corrupt EDB file & export mailboxes to Live Exchange or Office 365

    Outlook PST Repair Repair corrupt PST & recover all mailbox items including deleted emails & contacts

    OLM Repair Repair Outlook for Mac (OLM) 2011 & 2016 backup files & recover all mailbox items

    Exchange Toolkit Repair EDB & Exchange backup file to restore mailboxes, convert OST to PST, & convert EDB to PST

    Active Directory Repair Repair corrupt Active Directory database (Ntds.dit file) & extract all objects in original form

    EDB to PST Convert online & offline EDB file & extract all mailbox items including Public Folders in PST

    OST to PST Convert inaccessible OST file & extract all mailbox items including deleted emails in PST

    NSF to PST Convert IBM Notes NSF file & export all mailbox items including emails & attachments to PST

    MBOX to PST Convert MBOX file of Thunderbird, Entourage & other clients, & export mailbox data to PST

    OLM to PST Convert Outlook for Mac Data File (OLM) & export all mailbox data to PST in original form

    GroupWise to PST Convert GroupWise mail & export all mailbox items - emails, attachments, etc. - to PST

    EML to PST Convert Windows Live Mail (EML) file & export mailbox data - emails, attachments, etc. - to PST

    Office 365 to PST Connect to Office 365 account & export mailbox data to PST and various other formats

    DBX to PST Convert Outlook Express (DBX) file & export all mailbox data - emails, attachments, etc. - to PST

    SQL Repair Repair corrupt .mdf & .ndf files and recover all database components in original form

    Access Repair Repair corrupt .ACCDB and .MDB files & recover all records & objects in a new database

    QuickBooks Repair Repair corrupt QuickBooks® data file & recover all file components in original form

    MySQL Repair Repair MyISAM & InnoDB tables and recover all objects - keys, views, tables, triggers, etc.

    Excel Repair Repair corrupt Excel (.XLS & .XLSX) files and recover tables, charts, chart sheet, etc.

    BKF Repair Repair corrupt backup (BKF, ZIP, VHDX and .FD) files and restore complete data

    Database Converter Interconvert MS SQL, MySQL, SQLite, and SQL Anywhere database files

    PowerPoint Repair Repair corrupt PPT files and restore tables, header, footer, & charts, etc. like new

    File Repair Toolkit Repair corrupt Excel, PowerPoint, Word & PDF files & restore data to original form

    Data Recovery Windows Mac Recover lost or deleted data from HDD, SSD, external USB drive, RAID & more.

    Technician Toolkit

    Tape Data Recovery Retrives data from all types and capacities of tape drives including LTO 1, LTO 2, LTO 3, & others.

    Virtual Machine Recovery Recover documents, multimedia files, and database files from any virtual machine

    File Erasure Permanently wipe files and folders, and erase traces of apps and Internet activity.

    Standard Corporate

    Mobile Erasure Certified and permanent data erasure software for iPhones, iPads, & Android devices

    Drive Erasure Certified and permanent data erasure software for HDD, SSD, & other storage media Windows Mac

    Exchange Toolkit 5-in-1 software toolkit to recover Exchange database, convert EDB to PST, convert OST to PST, restore Exchange backup, and reset Windows Server password.

    Outlook Toolkit Comprehensive software suite to repair PST files, merge PST files, eliminate duplicate emails, compact PST files, and recover lost or forgotten Outlook passwords.

    File Repair Toolkit Powerful file repair utility to fix corrupt Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents created in Microsoft Office. It also repairs corrupt PDF files and recovers all objects.

    MS SQL Toolkit 5-in-1 software toolkit to repair corrupt SQL database, restore database from corrupt backup, reset database password, analyze SQL logs, & interconvert databases.

    Data Recovery Toolkit Software helps to recovers deleted data from Windows, Mac and Linux storage devices. Also supports recovery from RAIDs & Virtual Drives.

    Email Forensic Advanced email forensic solution for cyber experts to audit, analyze, or investigate emails & gather evidences.

    Exchange Auditor Exchange Server monitoring solution to automate audits, scans and generate reports ìn real-time.

    Log Analyzer for MySQL Analyze forensic details of MySQL server database log files such as Redo, General Query, and Binary Log.

    Log Analyzer for MS SQL Track & analyze MS SQL Server database transactions log files.

    STELLAR EMAIL FORENSIC

    Advanced email forensic tool to analyze and collect the mailbox data of email clients

    Learn More arrow


    All Products

    All Products

    All Products

    All Products

  • Our Partners
  • Lab Services
  • Trending Searches

    Data Recovery

    Photo Recovery

    Video Repair

    iPhone Data Recovery

    File Erasure Software

    Exchange Repair

    OST to PST

    PST Repair

    Raid Recovery

    MS SQL Repair

  • English Deutsch Français Nederlands Italiano Español 日本語 简体中文
  • Support
Photo Recovery 5 minute read

How to format USB flash drive using FAT/FAT32/NTFS/exFAT & Recover Data after Format

Updated on November 24th, 2021
Sumona Chatterjee
Written By
Sumona Chatterjee
Rohit Arora
Approved By
Rohit Arora

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.

Contents

  • Which file system should I choose for formatting my USB Drive?
  • How to format USB Flash Drive to FAT / FAT32 / NTFS / exFAT using Windows Explorer?
  • How to format USB Drive to NTFS / exFAT / FAT / FAT32 using Command Prompt?
  • Final Words

Which file system should I choose for formatting my USB Drive?

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.

Benefits of NTFS file system

If you select NTFS file system, you get:

  • Better disk space management.
  • Less space wastage.
  • Increased reliability and security with file encryption.
  • Small data clusters.
  • Compressed data so as to save disk space.
  • Ability to create permissions for individual files and folders.
  • Ability to read / write files larger than 32GB and up to maximum partition size.

Benefits of FAT / FAT32 file system

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:

  • Faster performing USB owing to write operations lesser.
  • Less memory usage.
  • Quick disk scanning.
  • Compatibility with almost all operating systems.
  • Less space is dedicated to the file system data to allow more free space to hold other data.

Benefits of exFAT file system

If you select exFAT file system, you get:

  • Ability to create partitions larger than 32GB.
  • Better disk space management.
  • Ability to read / write files larger than 4GB.

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.

How to format USB Flash Drive to FAT / FAT32 / NTFS / exFAT using Windows Explorer?

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.

Here’s the procedure to format USB Drive to NTFS / FAT / FAT32 / exFAT:

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”.

Fig. Format file system

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.

How to format USB Drive to NTFS / exFAT / FAT / FAT32 using Command Prompt?

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)

Fig. CMD

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

Fig. Format FAT32

Step 4 : When prompted, press Y (for Yes) or N (for No) to continue or stop the formatting.

Things to remember when formatting to NTFS

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:

  1. Right-click on the USB and select “Properties”.
  2. Under the “Hardware” tab choose the USB drive from the listed disks.
  3. Click on “Properties”.
  4. Select “policies” -> “better performance”.
  5. Click “OK”.

You have formatted your USB drive successfully! Great! Now What if you want to again get back your precious photos, audios or videos???

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:

Download for Windows Download for Mac

Final Words

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.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

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:

  • Using Windows Explorer
  • Using Command Prompt

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.

About The Author

Sumona Chatterjee

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.

Best Selling Products

Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows

Stellar Data Recovery has the right Windows Recovery tool for all your data recovery

Read More

Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac program performs safe..

 

Read More

Stellar Photo Recovery

A comprehensive photo recovery software to restore photos, music & video files

 

Read More

Stellar Repair for Video

Powerful video repair tool for repairing corrupt or damaged MOV and other video files

 

Read More

108 comments

  1. Mary says:
    June 1, 2020 at 10:21 pm

    Directions are easy. But nothing happens. Nothing at all from the command prompt. Mystified.

    Reply
    1. Ravi Singh says:
      September 2, 2020 at 9:28 am

      Can you please share the command output so that we can assist.
      Thanks!

      Reply
  2. Adrian Saidac says:
    September 26, 2018 at 10:07 pm

    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,

    Reply
    1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
      October 29, 2018 at 3:52 am

      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.

      Reply
  3. Tim says:
    June 19, 2018 at 4:44 pm

    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

    Reply
    1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
      July 19, 2018 at 5:19 am

      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.

      Reply
  4. Anna Kuperberg says:
    June 19, 2018 at 10:40 am

    how to format SD card to fat32 on mac?

    Reply
    1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
      June 26, 2018 at 9:54 am

      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.

      Reply
  5. Dio says:
    May 7, 2018 at 12:13 pm

    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

    Reply
    1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
      May 16, 2018 at 10:53 am

      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.

      Reply
  6. Karen says:
    May 6, 2018 at 7:34 pm

    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?

    Reply
    1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
      May 14, 2018 at 3:10 am

      Hello Karen,

      Macs offer full read-write support for exFAT.

      Reply
  7. jai says:
    March 9, 2018 at 3:01 am

    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?

    Reply
    1. Eric Simson says:
      March 12, 2018 at 4:54 am

      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.

      Reply
  8. Javier says:
    March 4, 2018 at 2:40 pm

    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.

    Reply
    1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
      March 5, 2018 at 5:53 am

      Hello Javier,

      Thanks for the feedback. Do you want to recover data from SD Card?
      Please let us know

      Reply
      1. Henry Horvath says:
        March 29, 2018 at 11:16 pm

        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?

      2. Sumona Chatterjee says:
        April 4, 2018 at 4:44 am

        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.

Comments navigation

Older comments Page 1 … Page 5

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

7  +  2  =  

Table of Contents    

  1. Which file system should I choose for formatting my USB Drive?
  2. How to format USB Flash Drive to FAT / FAT32 / NTFS / exFAT using Windows Explorer?
  3. How to format USB Drive to NTFS / exFAT / FAT / FAT32 using Command Prompt?
  4. Final Words

Categories

Related Posts

recover old photos
Photo Recovery

Solved: How to Recover Old Photos Deleted Years Ago

Stellar Author Nishat Paiker May 13, 2022 Read More
fix SD card reader not showing up on Windows
Photo Recovery

How to Fix SD Card Reader not showing up on Windows?

Stellar Author Sumona Chatterjee May 2, 2022 Read More
Photo Recovery

Deleted Partition Recovery on SD Card/ USB Drive

Stellar Author Nishat Paiker April 15, 2022 Read More

Stellar Official Website

Stellar Data Recovery Inc.
48 Bridge Street Metuchen,
New Jersey 08840,
United States

ALSO AVAILABLE AT

About

  • About us
  • Career
  • ISMS Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • License Policy
  • Refund Policy
  • End User License Agreement

RESOURCES

  • Blog
  • Articles
  • Product Videos
  • Knowledge Base
  • Case Studies
  • Whitepapers
  • Software Catalog

NEWS & EVENTS

  • News
  • Events

PARTNERS

  • Affiliates
  • Resellers
  • Distributors

Useful Links

  • Contact Us
  • Support
  • Special Offers
  • Student Discounts
  • Awards & Reviews
  • Downloads
  • Store
  • Sitemap
Follow Us

Stellar & Stellar Data Recovery are Registered Trademarks of Stellar Information Technology Pvt. Ltd. © Copyright 2022 Stellar Information Technology Pvt. Ltd. All Trademarks Acknowledged.

DMCA.com Protection Status
We use cookies on this website. By using this site, you agree that we may store and access cookies on your device Read More Got it!