Comments on: How to format USB drive and memory stick with NTFS

By: Asher

Asher — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:45:32 +0000

Worked perfectly for me on a Kingston 8 gig usb stick. I’m running Windows XP Pro. Thanks a lot! Great tip!

By: sarah

sarah — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:10:28 +0000

please help ive just inserted my memory stick and its saying I need to format it, but if i do i will lose all my data! I’ve got windows XP and am desperate .This memory stick worked perfectly well on sunday on this computer!!!!

By: Nitin chandna

Nitin chandna — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:31:04 +0000

Thanks a ton it …works…USB stick is now NTFS.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:18:37 +0000

Hi…This is a very interesting site. I was reading the other posts here about some problems people were having trying to format their drives and adding partitions,etc.

I am certainly not an expert by any means,but i like to read up on misc. things and I read something somewhere that might give others an idea on what the problem might be.

1.Problem With Formatting Drive:

I seem to have read something somewhere (sorry, i can’t remember where it was, so can’t verify accuracy), but it said that you can only format to NTFS once. You CANNOT reformat back to FAT or FAT32 once you have gone to NTFS. I don’t know why, or if this is accurate, but if it is, it might explain some problems with trying to reformat.

2. Adding Multiple Partitions:

I also read somewhere(again, I can’t remember where it was),something about if you want to add multiple partitions, that you need to make one of the partitions a Primary partition. I believe the system may get confused and not know which part of the drive or partition to go to if you don’t do this.

Again, I admit I am not an expert here at all,just relaying some information I read somewhere. I hope this helps and good luck!

By: Travis

Travis — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:50:27 +0000

Thanks for the heads-up… but for some reason mine ONLY gives me the option for FAT32…???

By: Wayne Kay

Wayne Kay — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:56:37 +0000

Worked the first time. Thank you soooo much!

By: How to encrypt your USB flash drive

How to encrypt your USB flash drive — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:22:22 +0000

[...] I have already written a post on how to format a USB drive in NTFS format, which walks you through the process step by [...]

By: dave

dave — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 01:43:54 +0000

I am running windows XP media centre edition. Reformatted Kingston 16 Gb stick memory to NTFS and it worked just fine.
Thanks.

By: Arshad Hussain

Arshad Hussain — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 04:23:18 +0000

Dear Sir,

Could you please let me know, how can I partition my memory stick in a Windows XP system?

By: Rensking

Rensking — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:28:02 +0000

First Formatt the USB-Device FAT32 in disk manager(in computer management), Right click on the USB device –> Format –> Make sure the file system is FAT32 than it says someting like FORCE the USB device to Formatt click on Yes than try the method above again:), this worked for me.

By: MentalNotes

MentalNotes — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:41:56 +0000

NTFS support under Ubuntu works well for me and has done so for a while now.

@John Galt: Windows doesn’t support more than one partition on a USB drive. Very annoying.

By: Michael Dolby

Michael Dolby — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:48:01 +0000

Hi Nat, Robot, SpeedyDay and everyone else who isn’t able to format their USB device.

Going to Start / typing in “CMD” / right clicking and selecting “run as administrator”, typing:

format e: /q /fs:ntfs

(e = drive letter of my USB device)

… still resulting in “Unable to format”.
Having discussed this subject in a computer forum, I have come to the conclusion that the fault is on my USB device.

Having applied:

chkdsk e: /f

(e = drive letter of my USB device)

… doesn’t find anything wrong though.
If it’s really faulty or just incompatible – I don’t know.
But I have given up.

A pitty really, because I would have loved to try out this:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1381323

By: SpeedyDay

SpeedyDay — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:34:56 +0000

I have a Kingston 64GB which I bought.. and have had problems since I received it. I have tried to format it in either fat32 or ntfs with no luck. Can any, please tell me what other means can I use to format. I have tried : cmd
format /fs:fat32 e: NO GOOD
and
changing through disk management – no good..

any suggestions???

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:44:29 +0000

Hi,
I’m Unable to format my 16GB Kingston USB stick, It has worked fine for weeks but suddenly stopped after I deleted all the data and is now asking me to format the drive which I’m unable to I’ve tried changing to NTFS but I still get the windows was unable to format message, please help I’m going mad!

By: racquelanne

racquelanne — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:58:30 +0000

i cant format my flash drive even though i use ntfs.when i do it a message that says “windows was unable to complete the format”.