When using external drives, quite often situations arise that force the user to resort to such an operation as formatting flash drives. Main reasons:
- the harmful effect of the virus;
- Inaccessibility of some sectors due to a malfunction.
The number of virus programs is growing every day. And since most computers have autorun enabled, which is very vulnerable, devices connected via USB are quite often exposed to the negative impact of malware. Sometimes the effects of infection are obvious. For example, folders with information may disappear, and labels will appear in their place. In other cases, it can be difficult to determine what caused the malfunction. For example, when a flash drive asks for formatting. After all, this can be either the result of a virus, or the result of a system failure, port malfunction, or the features of the selected system.
It should be borne in mind that the specifics of using external drives in itself often becomes the reason why the user has to wonder “how and with what format the flash drive?”. This is due to the fact that work occurs with a high-voltage USB port, periodic falls occur and other negative mechanical influences occur.
Whatever the reason, you should be aware that formatting is done using standard Windows tools. Thus, there is no need to look in other places than to format a USB flash drive or download additional software. In order to perform this procedure, you should open "My Computer" and right-click on the label that indicates the drive in the system. In the menu that opens, select the "Formatting" section and confirm your actions by pressing the "start" key.
Already knowing how to format a USB flash drive, two main points should be considered:
- file system;
- the way the procedure will be carried out.
The main file systems are NTFS and FAT32. Please note that FAT32 is not designed to transfer a file whose size exceeds 4 GB. Therefore, if the device has a large amount of memory and it is supposed to work with files that exceed the specified size, then you should opt for NTFS.
The method of the procedure is quick or complete. Before formatting a flash drive, you need to be aware of why this is done. Quick formatting affects the file location table. If necessary, it will be possible to recover information deleted during the cleaning process. Complete irrevocably destroy all available information.
Fast formatting is used when the device starts to work slowly or there are doubts about the presence of residual files of detected viruses. Full use if the device starts to generate errors when copying and reading data.
Thus, the formatting process is very simple, and it’s pretty easy to figure it out. The main thing is not to forget that this procedure destroys data, so you should worry about their safety in advance.