Formatting Flash Drive (FAT 32 or FAT?)

james76

james76

New Member
I'am formatting my flash drive and wantto know whether to use FAT 32 or FAT? I'am running xp. Thanks for any help
 
I'am formatting my flash drive and wantto know whether to use FAT 32 or FAT? I'am running xp. Thanks for any help
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Pick any one. Then if you have problems later, you can always copy the contents of the flash drive to your hard drive and reformat to the other.
 
ANY drive can be formatted NTFS, Windows XP will only let you format it to NTFS if it over like....1-2GB i think.
Third-party software lets you format flash drives into anything.
I'd go with FAT32 since FAT is too old but FAT would certainly work.
 
If you plan to ever pop it into an older computer that doesn't support NTFS, you might want to stick to FAT32 just for that reason. My mother-in-law still uses Win ME.

Mako
 
69mako said:
If you plan to ever pop it into an older computer that doesn't support NTFS, you might want to stick to FAT32 just for that reason. My mother-in-law still uses Win ME.

Mako
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I agree. I used to format mine in NTFS 'cause it's supposed to be faster but had problems when I tried to use it on my old Win98 laptop. I don't see any difference in performance, but at least my flash drive can now work in most machines.
 
It ain't right:mad:
My earlier post makes no sense cos I was replying to a comment in a post that got edited out later on.
 
if you ever format anything in NTFS on a small drive you are asking for problems. There is no logical reason to put a journaling meta-data file system on a small drive, you are asking for problems in the long run there. Journaling takes up space on the parition, and if there is a problem it can take up the whole amount of your flash drive. Ever see a flash drive have one 100mb file on it and it says its full, and its capacity is 1gig? That is typical when NTFS hiccups on your flash drive.

Fat16 - FAT32 doesn't matter unless you have larger capacity usb drives and are dealing with larger files. So, unless you have a usb flash drive that is over 4gig it most likely doesn't matter. However, you should look at the limitations of each.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table
 
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