Format Flash Drive to NTFS

Hi all,

I have a PNY 64MB and 256MB flash drives. I'm trying to format them to NTFS, 512 custer size.

However, no matter what I click\try, I only get the option of FAT or FAT32. My main drive is NTFS, 512 cluster size, and I want to store stuff on the flash drives.

How do I format to NTFS and is the cluster size necessary?

 

Why not FAT?

Hi jpChris, I dont know if it´s possible to format them to NTFS, but why wouldn´t you just format them to FAT16? Waste of space, due to lesser number of allocation units in FAT16 is not significant, with capacities like 64 and 256MB.

 

Hi Thomas,

I want to try the Files And Settings Transfer thingy and my OS is NTFS. Wouldn't there be a conflict if I format to FAT or FAT32 and transfer the settings? (there's no FAT16 option)

 

Hi, well I dont know how the files and settings Transfer-thingy would react, and I can see your point in trying to format those drives to NTFS.
But, the different file system alone is not a problem, I have often backed up my files in Win98SE machine to flash drive, and transferred those files to my "modern" computer with Win XP. And that Win98SE machine has two hard drives, bigger is FAT32 and smaller FAT16.
About the FAT/FAT16, they mean the same. Filesystem with less than 65,517 Allocation units. For example, I have 1.7GB hd with 52,030 Allocation units in my Win95 machine, and fdisk displays the filesystem as "FAT16 ". I guess, that when the new FAT32 file system came in mid -96(?), after that the older one was just called shortly FAT.

 

Hi Thomas,

Is your XP OS FAT32 or NTFS?

 

Oops, forgot to mention. My XP is NTFS.

 

Thanks for the update. But, I still need to know whether this might be an issue with the F.A.S.T. wizard.

 

I think that linux has a ntfs utility that does the job

 

Hi TonyT,

So I can just format the drive to FAT32, use the F.A.S.T. wizard, and copy\move my settings to a new MoBo, correct?

 

Thanks, Tony, I didn't see anything about a file system, either.

 

According to it's documentation the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - v2.1.8 program will format a USB drive to NTFS. I have used it to format to FAT32 in the process of creating a bootable USB drive for updating the BIOS in my netbook but not to NTFS.

I got my copy of the program at this link: Click Here

 

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the link. I'll try the F.A.S.T. with FAT32 and if it doesn't work, I'll reformat to NTFS.