Best Way To Format And Restore USB Flash Drive Using FAT/FAT32/NTFS/exFAT

USB drives are a medium to transport data, and they are easy to convey data from one platform to another platform. The best thing is the capability to rewrite the data. It makes it reusable but to rewrite the data you need to format USB Drive. Windows offers some default file systems to format flash drives like NTFS, FAT, FAT32 or exFAT. FAT or FAT 32. So, in this handout, you’ll get to know how to format USB flash drive using FAT/FAT32/NTFS/exFAT file systems to make it reusable.

USB or flash drives are tiny little devices that are compact enough to carry, and they can store a lot of data that depends upon their storage limit. You can use them to increase your phone’s space, storing the backup, as a boot drive and many more ways. But as I’ve told you earlier to make them reusable, we need to format them. Cleaning the old data can be done in some simple ways, but the most important thing is the file system to formatting them which suits the target or destined system.

How To Decide The File System To Format USB Flash Drive?

When using a windows system, you get four file systems as an option to format the drive. You can use FAT, FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT to format the flash drive. They can be selected as per the target environment, and you can also opt for them as per the advantages of them.

Advantages of FAT/ FAT32

The FAT and FAT 32 is compatible with most of the operating systems. They use less storage space and also get scanned quickly. The file system data is too small in size which allows you to store more data into the drive.

Advantages of NTFS

NTFS is the best file system to format the external USB drive. It offers less space wastage and security by encrypting the data. The data also get compressed which also helps you to store more data in a few spaces. You are also allowed to set permissions on individual files and folders.

Advantages of exFAT

This file system can be used to utilize the disk management. It also lets the user read and write files over 4 GB size, and you can also create a partition of more than 32 GB in size.

How To Format An External USB Flash Drive?

You can follow the below methods to free up space of the flash drive.

Using Windows Format Option:

Step 1. Insert the drive in the USB port and wait for the system to detect it. If the drive is undetectable, then try to rename the drive assigned letter.

Step 2. Right-click on the drive and select the Format option.

Step 3. Opt for the desired file system like FAT, FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT from the freshly appeared dialog box and give the drive a name under the volume label. Also, opt for the Format option.

Step 4. Before going further make sure that you have taken the backup of the data in case it has some crucial data in it. Click on the Start button and initiate the format process. Then click on the Yes button and the data will get erased and you’ll get notified.

Format USB Using CMD and diskpart Commands Windows 10

In case if Windows format option was unable to format the disk then Follow the below steps to format USB using the diskpart on command prompt:

Step 1. Go to the search bar and type cmd then, right-click on the command prompt icon and select “Run as administrator”.

Step 2. On Command Prompt, type diskpart and hit enter.

Step 3. Type list disk and hit enter. Determine your disk by the size and properties. Suppose it is disk 2.

Step 4. Now, type select disk 2 and hit the enter.

Step 5. Type clean and click on the Enter.

Step 6. Type create partition primary and press Enter key.

Step 7. After the creation of the specified partition, type format fs=ntfs and hit Enter. If you want another file system, then change the command NTFS to the desired such as fat, FAT32, exFAT, etc.

Step 8. Type assign to create/assign a drive letter to the external USB flash drive.

Note: This will format your USB drive and also assign a drive letter to the removable USB drive.

It is a wise move to take a backup before going to format the flash drive. If in case you have already formatted some of your valuable information without taking the backup of the drive then you can go for the below method.

How To Recover Data From Formatted External USB Flash Drive?

As it is always recommended to take the backup of the data before formatting the disk, but you haven’t taken it and formatted the drive, then you can go for the Windows Data Recovery utility that is capable enough to restore data from any kind of physical storage drive. But, you need to take some precautions if you have already been mistaken with the flash drive.

• Don’t rewrite any data over the formatted disk.
• Don’t plug or remove the drive multiple times.

You can follow the below steps to recover data from formatted USB Drive:

Step 1. Plug the USB drive and wait for the drive to get detected by the system.

Step 2. Download the Windows Data Recovery utility and launch it on your system.

Step 3. Select the USB drive for recovery and provide the recovery mode.

Step 4. Provide the saving location for the recoverable data.

Step 5. Now, the utility tool will generate a preview of the recoverable data.

Step 6. Click on the Yes button when it says “Do you want to save deleted files?”.

Step 7. Soon the recovered data will get saved on the desired location.

Download Now

By following these steps, all your deleted external USB Drive files will get restored, and you can access them back again. That’s why it is always recommended to take the backup of the drive prior to erase data from it. You can take the following precautions when working with the external flash drives:

• Don’t abruptly teardown the external media drive.
• Eject before detaching the drive.
• Take a backup of the USB drive data prior to format it.
• Keep the USB drive drivers up to date.

Conclusion

The above-stated methods can help you to format USB flash drive using FAT, FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT systems and in case you have lost or accidentally deleted data then there is also the method to restore the external USB media drive. I hope it will help you out.

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