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format a 2 gb flash drive

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10 replies

by jimaearl

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I cannot create a new partion nor make my partion active as that section is greyed out. When I try to format it goes almost to the end and then says 'cannot format'

10 replies

by mamies

I assume you a using XP or Vista although if you are trying to partition a flash drive into 2 or more partitions using these flavours of Windows, Good Luck i seem to have to use a flavour of linux like Ubuntu or Auditor. The partitioner can be found on the Live CD

by mamies

plug the USB drive into the machine is it found in my computer just without partitions and file systems

by kanaloa98

some USB drives have "locks" on them
literally a little switch, make sure its not "locked"

by jimaearl

this drive was working well, untill I took it out without using 'safely remove hardware' and now i can't format it and it wont accept any data

by kanaloa98

I'm willing to guess it's shot.
Plug into another computer and should auto prompt you to format
use FAT32 if you dont want to use the "safely remove hardware" feature

by Former member

Q. Are there any problems associated with reformatting USB flash drives, which use FAT formatting, to use NTFS? I'd like to reformat my current drive, but I won't if it's going to cause problems.

A. The main problem with formatting flash drives using NTFS is that the features of this format also produce much more wear and tear on the flash drive which will cause it to wear out much faster.

NTFS is a journalling files system and, as such, reads and writes to files much more often than other file systems like FAT and FAT32. This is because disk transactions are logged separately on the disk as they occur.

That being said, if you have done your research and have decided to format your USB flash drive using NTFS I will even tell you how it's done.

To enable NTFS on your drive, right click My Computer and select Manage. Open the Device Manager and find your USB drive under the Disk Drives heading. Right click the drive and select Properties, then go to the Policies tab and select the "Optimize for performance" option and Click OK.

Once you do that, open up My Computer and right click on the flash drive and select Format. There you will see that you now have the option to format to NTFS in the File System dropdown box.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

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