Flash Drive Question For Reformat

I have a 32GB Flash Drive.

I was wondering what is better for my flash drive to be reformatted I have two options here Fat 32 and exFat witch is faster for this kinda drive.

 

ExFat never really took off. I'd go with FAT32 since your drive is within its 32gb limit and it will be most compatible with other machines.

 

If you're using WinXP then any flash drive over 4GB will not be able to have the full capacity of the drive utilized until you format it using NTFS.

 

Hi puppywunder58,

I think the deal is that a FAT32 filesystem has a limitation that any single file cannot be larger than 4gb. But a FAT32 partition can be up to 32gb. So the drive can e formatted to FAT32.

Formatting to NTFS allows files larger than 4gb to be written to the drive. So if Goldenskull has a 4.5gb ISO file that he needs to write to the drive then NTFS is the best choice.

 

Thanks sach2, I have a 16GB flash drive that I was unable to transfer a large file (over 4GB) to using WinXP so I had to format the drive to NTFS.

 

Hi Plodr,

Did you manage to format them as FAT32 if they were bigger than 32GB?

I seem to recall having issues (although the details are a little hazey) with and external drive (not flash but hard disk). I wanted to use an external Hard disk to back up TV programs of my PVR and that would oly recognise FAT32. I had a 500GB drive but Windows Vista wouldnt let me create a FAT32 partition that was bigger than 32GB. I did find a work around that involved me using command prompt to instigate the format. Where it gets hazey is wherer the issue was creating the partition or formatting.

I seem to recall it was when I was creating the partition in Windows Disk management but I cant honestly remember. I dont think that there is a need to use disk management to create partitions on Flash Drives which may be why Plodr has 64GB disks in FAT32, but Im not sure. I appreciate that this is going of on a tangent but it is quite interesting

Rich

 

Sorry Plodr,

Wasnt questioning whether it can be done as I know it can but wasnt sure how you had done it. You say it came pre configured like that?

I found Windows wouldnt let me create a FAT32 greater than 32GB. I think there are programmes that will let you do it but I think I did it from Dos Prompt

 

Cool.