Solid state storage media (flash drives) have become incredibly popular. They are carried in pockets along with mobile phones, on chains instead of trinkets, on keychains. Without a doubt, it’s convenient - negligible weight, compact size, versatility of the USB bus.
Having a flash drive at hand, you can at any time transfer any information to it from a computer or “drop” data from such a medium onto a hard drive. However, the solid-state technology is still too young and goes through almost the same stages that, in due time, were inherent only to hard drives.
This is now the volume of hard drives in the hundreds of gigabytes and no one doubts which file system to choose - FAT, FAT32, NTFS or a compromise exFAT. But with respect to storage devices based on solid-state memory, everything is completely different. For example, many users are interested in whether the USB flash drive should be reformatted to NTFS. The information provided on various Internet pages and forums is often contradictory. Therefore, it is not always clear whether to convert a USB flash drive to NTFS or not.
Most modern solid-state storage media are implemented already pre-formatted. And, interestingly, NTFS is very rarely used. In other words, although you can remake a USB flash drive in NTFS in a few minutes, you should first think about why manufacturers are trying to avoid this file system. We make a reservation that we are talking about flash drives, not SSDs.
Before telling how to convert a flash drive to NTFS, we indicate the main positive and negative sides of this operation. Compare the "old" FAT32 and the newer NTFS.
One of the most important advantages of the latter is the highest reliability of data storage. According to the standard, during the operation of this file system, two allocation tables (journaling) are conducted at once, which allows to duplicate the registration of completed operations to some extent. Owners of NTFS-formatted hard drives almost never encounter starting a disk scan utility after an incorrect shutdown. Thus, it may seem that if you format the USB flash drive in NTFS, then reliability will increase.
Alas, in this case this is not entirely true. Solid-state memory cells are characterized, inter alia, by the number of valid read / write transactions. Thus, the introduction of a backup mechanism increases the number of calls to the device, thereby reducing its resource.
Therefore, do not rush to transfer the USB flash drive to NTFS. In addition, the "extra" records reduce the overall performance.
One of the undoubted advantages is the ability to record files larger than 4 Gigabytes. Only exFAT can boast of this.
After weighing all the pros and cons, you can start formatting. After connecting the flash drive, you need to open the “My Computer” shortcut, click the right mouse button on the drive letter of the flash drive and select the “Format” command in the menu list. Here you need to specify the desired system. If there is no NTFS in the list, then open the “Device Manager”, go to “Disk Devices”, for the flash drive in the “Policy” tab we set the optimization for execution.