Format and Chkdsk of USB Flash Disks

  • Thread starter Thread starter Will
  • Start date Start date
W

Will

How is one supposed to check for errors on, and reformat, a USB flash disk?
I assume these things all have some specialized geometry, and a standard
command line CHKDSK or format is going to mess them up?
 
You can reformat a USB flash drive just like any other hard drive. You can
go to "My Computer", right click on the drive and choose format. Or you can
go to Disk Manager and do the format there.

You can run chkdsk as well in the usual way. Simply go to a command prompt,
and type: chkdsk (letter of drive):

You may want to know that USB drives use the FAT or FAT32 file systems
rather than NTFS due to their smaller size and to ensure portability.
 
CHKDSK and format will not mess them up. They are basically treated the same
way as a hard drive to the OS. You can format them as FAT, FAT32, NTFS among
others. Nothing special, really. :)
 
Back
Top