FAT or NTFS on a flash drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cycle
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C

Cycle

I have just bought my first flash drive. It is pre-formatted with FAT.

My computer uses NTFS (on WinXP Pro).

I shall want to transfer files between the computer and the flash drive. Can
I do this leaving the formatting as it is, or should I format the flash
drive to NTFS, or doesn't it matter?

Regards.
 
Cycle said:
I have just bought my first flash drive. It is pre-formatted with FAT.

My computer uses NTFS (on WinXP Pro).

I shall want to transfer files between the computer and the flash
drive. Can I do this leaving the formatting as it is, or should I
format the flash drive to NTFS, or doesn't it matter?

Regards.
Click to expand...

Leave the flash drive formatted the way it came. You will have no
problems transferring files to it.

Malke
 
Cycle said:
I have just bought my first flash drive. It is pre-formatted with FAT.

My computer uses NTFS (on WinXP Pro).
Click to expand...


Actually, no it doesn't. It's your hard drive that uses NTFS, not your
entiore computer. Your floppy drive, if you have one, uses FAT12, and your
CD drive uses CDFS. Your computer, running Windows XP, has no problem using
multiple file systems.

I shall want to transfer files between the computer and the flash
drive. Can I do this leaving the formatting as it is, or should I
format the flash drive to NTFS, or doesn't it matter?
Click to expand...


Leave it alone. It doesn't matter. You can transfer files back and forth
between the flash drive and the hard drive just as you can between a floppy
and the hard drive or a CD and hard drive.
 
Ken Blake said:
Actually, no it doesn't. It's your hard drive that uses NTFS, not your
entiore computer. Your floppy drive, if you have one, uses FAT12, and your
CD drive uses CDFS. Your computer, running Windows XP, has no problem
using multiple file systems.




Leave it alone. It doesn't matter. You can transfer files back and forth
between the flash drive and the hard drive just as you can between a
floppy and the hard drive or a CD and hard drive.
Click to expand...


Ken,

Ah, yes, I see your point, which was well put. Thank you for taking the time
to feed that information to me.

Regards,

Cycle.
 
Cycle said:
Ken,

Ah, yes, I see your point, which was well put. Thank you for taking
the time to feed that information to me.
Click to expand...



You're welcome. Glad to help.
 
I just happened to be browsing this newsgroup and I cam across your
informative input.

3-months ago I bought a new notebook (AMD Turion 64)which had its 100GB
HD formatted as FAT 32.

Is there any advantage at this stage of the game to convert the HD to
NTFS or will I be opening a Pandora's Box?

Thanks!
 
Cary said:
I just happened to be browsing this newsgroup and I cam across your
informative input.

3-months ago I bought a new notebook (AMD Turion 64)which had its
100GB HD formatted as FAT 32.

Is there any advantage at this stage of the game to convert the HD to
NTFS or will I be opening a Pandora's Box?
Click to expand...


It's not strictly necessary but NTFS does have a number of advantages and I
think it's worth doing.

To convert to NTFS, you use the CONVERT command. But first read
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfscvt.htm because there's an issue regarding
cluster size that isn't obvious.

Also note that conversion is a big step, affecting everything on your drive.
When you take such a big step, no matter how unlikely, it is always possible
that something could go wrong and caus the loss of everything on your drive.
For that reason, it's prudent to make sure you have a backup of anything you
can't afford to lose before beginning.
 
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