Questions about Flash Drives

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by oma, Mar 11, 2013.

  1. oma

    oma MajorGeek

    As a complete dumb noob to Flash Drives, a while back I purchased some Flash Drives in order to put my documents, pictures, videos, music and Firefox as backups on them. Currently 5 in use. From what I can see on these flash drives, all info on them seem to be okay.

    I did not format these Flash Drives prior to put the above info on them and didn't know if that needed to be done. Plug and Play eh? :-D Are all Flash Drives FAT?

    If FAT or FAT32, do these 5 drives need to be converted to NTFS? 3 of them are 8GB and the other 2 are 4GB

    If yes, I did find a link on how to do it and will do so if necessary and if the info provided is correct I will do so. Here's the link. http://www.ehow.com/how_5030388_format-flash-drive-ntfs.html

    Looking forward to your answer(s). TIA
     
    oma, Mar 11, 2013
    #1
  2. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    I have over two dozen USB sticks of various brands and various sizes. I have NEVER converted any of the sticks. If they work, let them alone.

    The only thing I had to do was format one stick because through my own stupidity I tried to put too more on the stick. It froze. I was unable to remove anything (delete or a simple move). I used HP's old format tool and I've been using that stick for a few years now.
     
    plodr, Mar 11, 2013
    #2
  3. oma

    oma MajorGeek

    Great! Thanks plodr..... I will leave these Flash Drives as is then.

    While reading some info on these drives there was a mention of 4 or 5 MB that FAT can read. Since I have videos that are more than 5 MB in size I wasn't sure if I had done the right thing by not formatting the drives to NTSF. Yet the videos I tried out on one flash drive played fine.
     
    oma, Mar 11, 2013
    #3
  4. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    You sure it wasn't 4GB and not MB?

    I have videos on USB sticks and I'm sure they are much larger than 4 or 5MB. Just checked and one of the tv episodes of Roswell is 487MB. I can view it fine on 2K, XP, 7 and linux.

    What is your largest file? If it is under 4GB you will be fine.
     
    plodr, Mar 11, 2013
    #4
  5. oma

    oma MajorGeek

    You're right plodr, it's 4GB and not 4 MB. Largest video I have is about 11MB, mostly YT videos.

    WOW, large video you've got.
     
    oma, Mar 11, 2013
    #5
  6. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    Well it is a 45 minute tv episode.
    I have all 22 episodes of Season 1 on a USB stick.

    You'll be fine with the 11MB file.
     
    plodr, Mar 11, 2013
    #6
  7. oma

    oma MajorGeek

    Thanks plodr. No wonder you put them on a Flash Drive. Way too many GBs to leave them on a PC. Roswell, is that about area 51, is that the one?
     
    oma, Mar 11, 2013
    #7
  8. Spock96

    Spock96 Major Geek 'Spocky'

    Really the only reason that I have ever formatted a thumb drive was because I was modding an Xbox with my brother and it needed to be FAT32, but that is a very specific instance. I used them all the time and have only ever formatted that one.
     
    Spock96, Mar 11, 2013
    #8
  9. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    Actually it was about the town of Roswell, NM and based on the teen books where 4 aliens who survived the crash went to high school in Roswell.
    I never saw it when it was on tv but I enjoyed watching a decade later.

    I tend to do that a lot. Discover a tv show or movie years after it was popular.
     
    plodr, Mar 12, 2013
    #9
  10. oma

    oma MajorGeek

    Guess you must be liking Science Fiction, so do I. :)
     
    oma, Mar 13, 2013
    #10
  11. abekl

    abekl First Sergeant

    I maintain a mix of file sizes on my flash drives, some under 4GB, some over 4 GB. To eliminate any problems with large files and FAT32, the first thing I do when I get a flash drive is format it to NTFS. Done. No problems with files that are too large, ever. Plus I get the added file integrity inherent in the NTFS file system.
     
    abekl, Mar 14, 2013
    #11
  12. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    abekl, for those of us running linux, FAT was stable and readable/writeable long before linux supported doing things on NTFS drives. From force of habit and because most of my sticks were used before I'd trust linux and NTFS, I keep that they way they come out of the package.

    If I have a file larger than 4 GB, I don't put it on a USB stick; an external hd or DVD is a better place for it for my needs.
     
    plodr, Mar 14, 2013
    #12
  13. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    By the way,

    If you want to keep cross platform compatibility and store single files that could be larger than 4GB, you need to convert to exFat.

    Large drives these days are shipping as exFat, not Fat32 (and definitely not NTFS).

    I have a 32GB flash drive and it is exFat.
     
    Adrynalyne, Mar 14, 2013
    #13

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