Format usb drive windows tool3/1/2024 ![]() ![]() In college, Nick made extensive use of Fortran while pursuing a physics degree. Before How-To Geek, he used Python and C++ as a freelance programmer. He has been using computers for 20 years - tinkering with everything from the UI to the Windows registry to device firmware. Nick Lewis is a staff writer for How-To Geek. Its age comes with one major perk and one major downside: It is basically universally supported by all computers and game consoles, but it can't handle files larger than four gigabytes. FAT32 is ancient by computer standards - it has been around since the mid-90s. If you don't expect to need to move any large files, you should consider FAT32. Related: What Is a File System, and Why Are There So Many of Them? ![]() The only downside is that storing lots of small files might result in some wasted space due to the block sizes. Needless to say, you won't have to worry about that limitation with your flash drive any time before 2040 at the earliest. The file system exFat also supports USB drives and files larger than 100 petabytes. ExFAT is supported by Linux, macOS, Chrome OS, and Windows, meaning it will work with the overwhelming majority of all computers you will ever encounter. You should probably pick exFAT If you don't know which file format you need, or you don't have any specific use in mind. (For example, you should run a full format to securely erase any sensitive data before disposing of or giving away a USB drive.) Since flash memory has a limited number of writes, you should avoid full formats unless it is absolutely necessary. A full format will overwrite the entire USB drive. A quick format won't actually wipe any data, it'll just allow it to be overwritten.
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