Format USB drive as NTFS??

[jsteph]

Hi,
Why can't I format my usb drive to NTFS? I bought a 16-gig thumb drive specifically to move large database files, and it seems to have a 2-gig fat32 filesize limit.

I tried going into computer management mmc and formatting there, but the only option is Fat32. Why can't this be seen as ntfs?
Thanks,
--Jim

 

[BadBigBen]

Simple rule: Google first, then post here, these are the first two links I found using GOOGLE:

How To Format a USB Flash Drive with the NTFS File System

http://www.howtodothings.com/comput...t-a-usb-flash-drive-with-the-ntfs-file-system

How do I format a USB Flash Drive to NTFS file system?

http://www.ntfs.com/quest22.htm

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[kjv1611]

I'll give you a personal recommendation from experience: If you're going to regularly move large files (>FAT32 limit), then get an external hard drive instead. NTFS doesn't do well with USB drives. At the least, the drive will usually run slower (sometimes the same, but I've seen some serious performance loss, myself).

Also, the flash drives I've tried this on didn't fare as well once formatting as NTFS.

Also, changing the default format on a flash drive can have adverse affects, moreso than with a hard drive. Defragging also can be bad.

Generally, USB thumb drives are GREAT for small transfers, but for anything big, you really need to go with an external hard drive or external SSD.

My experience? Transferring large media files multiple times in a week between myself, my church, and other people. With computer work type stuff - small applications, documents, etc, no problem. With large media files (RAW PCM WAV audio, HDV files, etc), I've fared FAR FAR better using external hard drives.... OR... using internal hard drives with HDD docks. I've just recently begun doing this.

And here's a word of advice in case you want to try the internal hard drive via dock method - for convenience sake, make sure the HDD is hot-swappable. I forgot about that when picked up a few Samsung SpinPoint F3s to find out they are NOT hot-swappable. For me, it's a headache/pain. For you, it may not matter.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[jsteph]

Ben,
Thanks very much!
--Jim

 

[jsteph]

kjv,
Thanks for the input. For the time being, I've got Winzip 14 and it splits files into even boundaries (such as generic floppy size, generic cd-rom size, Fat32 max, etc).

So that's a big step to be able to split to the 4 gig (i'd mistakenly thought 2 gig) Fat32 max.

For kicks though I'm going to try the formatting suggestions and test the performance.
--Jim