Format your USB device in NTFS Format

[Alexxx]

hi,, I am having a Windows XP Computer and i want format my USB device in NTFS format. Is that possible ? If yes, How ?

[Anand D.]

Ofcourse its possible. If you have ever tried to format a USB thumb drive or memory stick, you may have noticed that the only options you get are FAT and FAT32 file systems. This is the default behavior in Windows XP. However, with some slight tweaking of settings, you can actually format your removable storage devices in NTFS format, including external hard drives, etc.

you need some steps to enable NTFS on your USB Flash Drive, follow this:-

1. Right click My Computer and select Manage.

2. Open the Device Manager and find your USB drive under the Disk Drives heading.

3. Right click the drive and select Properties.

4. Choose Policies tab and select the "Optimize for performance" option.

5. Click OK.

6. Open My Computer.

7. Select Format on the flash drive.

8. Choose NTFS in the File System dropdown box.

9. Device Formatting is completed.

Now remove your USB by "safely remove hardware" to prevent your data loss.

[aalbaiz]

In windows the default formatting of removable storage is FAT and FAT32. But NTFS is a feature that is inbuilt in Windows XP allows you encrypting your data.It also lets you to add allow and deny permissions on individual files and folders for specific Windows users, something you can’t think of using, Which you cannot do in the FAT file system.To use NTFS system for formating your USB device in Windows XP, just gp through this tips:-

1. First, connect your USB device to your computer.

2. Right-click on My Computer from the desktop and choose Manage.

3. Click on Device Manager and then expand out Disk Drives. You should see your USB drive listed there as “Generic USB 2.0 USB Drive” or something similar.

4. Now right-click on the USB drive under Disk Drives and choose Properties. Then go to the Policies tab.

5. Here you can see the “Optimize for quick removal” selected by default.Go ahead and change that by selecting the “Optimize for performance” option. This enables writing caching on the drive and therefore allows you to format it as NTFS.

6. Now click OK and then go to My Computer. Right click on the drive in My Computer and choose Format. In the File System drop down you will now see the option for NTFS!

Now you are done. Now remove USB by ejecting it from MyComputer or by safe remove hardware

[Michael Sabin]

Its a great trick. But I don’t want to go deeper into the topic but I guess it does not make sense to format USB device as NTFS, considering the prospect of data loss if anyone miss to plug it off safely. Still it`s good to know I think. Thanks..