
List partition: list all partitions on the chosen disk Type the following commands in sequence and press Enter after each. Then type "diskpart" and click "OK" key to open DiskPart.exe window.Ģ. Press “Windows+R” key to open Run window. Right-click the USB flash drive you need to format and select “Format…”.Ģ. In the pop-out mini window, choose “NTFS” under File System volume. Double click “My Computer/This PC” to open File Explorer.

Select “NTFS” in the “File system” box and then tick “Perform a quick format’.Ĥ. Click “OK” to format the drive and wait until finished.ġ. Right click on the external hard drive to format and click on “Format…” in the drop-down menu.ģ. Then type "Diskmgmt.msc" and click "OK" key.Ģ. Or use “Windows+R” key to open Run window. Right click “My Computer/This PC” on the desktop, select “Manage”>”Storage”> “Disk Management” to open Disk Management. Warning: Back up important files on the USB flash drive if necessary because the formatting process will wipe out everything on the drive. To format USB flash drive to NTFS file system in Windows 10, 8, 7 operating system, you can use Windows native tools such as Windows Disk Management, File Explorer or DiskPart Command Line.
#HOW TO REFORMAT A USB DRIVE ON WINDOWS 7 HOW TO#
How to format USB flash drive to NTFS in Windows 10, 8, 7?

So, for most users, it is suggested to format the USB flash drive to NTFS especially when they need to store large files on USB. By contrast, the NTFS can support volume as large as 256TB, and its file size support tops out at 16EiB. So, you can not save a single file over 4GB to FAT32 partition, and you can format 2TB hard drive to FAT32 at most. The FAT32 only supports a single file up to 4GB and a volume up to 2TB in size. NTFS is introduced as a replacement for the FAT file system it makes use of advanced data structure to improve reliability, disk space utilization and overall performance.īesides, their most significant difference lies in the file size and partition size limit.

FAT32 uses the File Allocation Table to describe the allocation stats of the clusters in a file system and the link relationship between each. However, it is tough for users to make a decision between NTFS and FAT32 when it comes to formatting a USB flash drive in Windows 10, 8, 7. NTFS and FAT32 are two common file system for Windows operating system.
