How To Format A Thumb Drive In Windows 10

by Nicholas Moller | February 25th, 2020

Windows, in general, is an extremely user friendly operating system. The same thing is true when it comes to formatting a flash bulldoze on Windows or any removable media like an external hard bulldoze. While this guide is specifically for Windows 10, it will work for all versions of Windows from XP and up.

Nosotros are going to exist formatting our USB flash bulldoze using the exFAT file system, however, this guide will work for whatever file system you choose. We recommend exFAT because of its ability to piece of work on almost whatsoever system including Apple OS X, Linux, and obviously Windows. It also does non have a 4GB max file size like some other file systems practise.

Warning: Formatting annihilation will erase all the data contained on that drive. And so before doing then, back up your import files!

Quick breakup of the steps

Hither is a brief summary of the steps necessary to format a wink drive on Windows 10, or whatever other windows version back to Windows XP.

1. Insert your USB wink drive into your computer (obviously).
2. Open File Explorer.
3. In the left pane right click the name of your USB bulldoze.
4. From the menu, click Format.
5. In the File Arrangement drib down, select the exFAT.
6. Click start to format the drive.

Footstep 1: Open File Explorer

Open up File Explorer either past clicking on the file binder icon on your taskbar or with the keyboard shortcut combination Win + E. Once open, locate your USB flash bulldoze, or external hard drive, you would similar to format, in our instance it is drive D:

Step 2: Right click your bulldoze and select format

Once you have File Explorer opened you lot volition see on the correct mitt side a list of devices and locations. Your flash bulldoze should be amid those. Right click your USB flash drive and select format from the resulting dialog box.

You might want to unplug other flash drives and removable media to avoid confusion. Notice we have simply one USB wink bulldoze plugged in.

Stride iii: Cull the appropriate file system and showtime the format

The format dialog box has a few options in it. The well-nigh important of these is the File System option. Most of the time when formatting external media like USB flash drives and external difficult drives the goal is to motility to a more modern file system in order to store files larger than 4GB which is a problem with FAT32.

We recommend going with exFAT as the file arrangement since it doesn't have a 4GB file limitation like FAT32 does, but it will also work on Apple computers, Linux computers, and of grade Windows. You lot tin however choose whatever file arrangement you lot would like.

Select the file system you lot desire and click offset. You will be presented with a warning explaining that the files on your USB flash drive volition exist erased click okay, only if you've backed up your files, and that is it. Your drive is refreshed.

Select the File System you would like to apply and click Start.

That is all at that place is to it. This is one of the more simplistic tasks on Windows that most people are afraid of tackling. But remember when you lot are formatting things you lot will erase all the information on that storage device, so be careful.

Source: https://www.usbmemorydirect.com/blog/how-to-format-a-usb-flash-drive-on-windows-10/

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