In the past few years, flash memory has become several times more advanced and affordable. Therefore, it is not surprising that the lucky owners of flash drives these days are almost all users of personal computers. But not all of them know how to handle a drive, a memory card of a mobile phone, an MP3 player, a photo frame or a camera. And even more so, far from everyone knows that it is best to format a USB flash drive in NTFS.
The NTFS file system has become popular literally in the last couple of years, with the advent of new versions of operating systems and faster hardware. Due to the fact that FAT (and its ideological continuation FAT32) remained the most popular file system for a long time. That is why almost all flash drives are formatted by default in this outdated file system today. For stable and faster work with operating systems such as Windows 7 and the G8 already preparing for release, it is advisable to attach any removable storage medium to a newer and more popular file system. That is why formatting a flash drive in NTFS in the modern world is actually the key to stable and uptime of your portable device.
NTFS (literally stands for “file system of new technologies”) is a fairly popular file system in our time, replaced by the obsolete FAT and FAT32. Everyone knows that many operating systems (for example, the still very popular "Windows XP") do not allow the USB flash drive to be formatted in NTFS by default. But you can perform this simple operation in several ways that will not cause difficulties even for novice users.
The easiest way to format a flash drive in NTFS in “XP” is to call the corresponding function from the context menu called “Format”. Since this function is disabled by default in this version of "windows", it must first be "enabled". This is done quite simply. We go to the “Properties” of the computer and in the “Hardware” tab, left-click on the submenu “Device Manager”, and from it we turn to “Disk devices”. Then we find among all the drives connected to the computer our removable media and double-click on the “Policy” tab. In this menu we find the item “Optimize for fast execution”, click “OK”, thereby saving our actions, and exit.
Now, when you select "Format", you can perform this operation in the NTFS file system without any problems. Moreover, formatting the flash drive (NTFS will be one of the proposed options along with FAT32) will be a little faster.
Another option to enable this formatting is called conversion. This feature is built into the operating system and does not require the installation of any additional programs. To format a USB flash drive in NTFS in this way, we turn to the Start menu, click the Run line and type the following line at the command prompt:
Convert A: / fs: ntfs / nosecurity. / X, where A
- the letter of our removable disk. This option is more suitable for advanced users and those beginners who are not afraid to experiment.
Formatting removable media to the NTFS file system can also be done using third-party programs. The most popular utility for this is considered to be the “USB Disk Storage Format Tool” from the well-known company “HP”. Dealing with such programs is not difficult even for a novice user.
After you have already learned how to format to various file systems, do not forget about another important circumstance: formatting completely erases the data on your media! Therefore, do not forget to make a backup copy of all the information that interests you on the flash drive before starting this procedure.