Formatting Flash Drive - Help

[crf]

Hello all,

I'm new here so please bare with me. I recently bought a new 8Gb USB Flash Drive and I tried to transfer an ISO file onto it (which failed). I've found out that the flash drive is formatted to FAT32 and so can't hold any data greater than 4Gb, so I need to change it to NTFS.

How do I do this?


Any help will be greatly appreciated.



Thanks.

 

[Tedster]

go to disk management in the control panel to reformat it.
ensure you have the CORRECT letter of the drive.

 

[crf]

go to disk management in the control panel to reformat it.
ensure you have the CORRECT letter of the drive.

Hi,

Thanks for that, the letter of the drive is correct but it displays an error "windows was unable to complete the format" once I tried to format it?


What else can I try?

 

[mscrx]

gparted live cd will format the drive
you could also have a look at the vendors site and search for tools for the flash drive or maybe you got a util/drivers cd with flash drive?

 

[Tedster]

look for a hd disk formatting CD. Be careful not to format your real HD.

also read the FAQs

 

[mscrx]

look for a hd disk formatting CD

...thats what gparted live cd is

 

[crf]

gparted live cd will format the drive
you could also have a look at the vendors site and search for tools for the flash drive or maybe you got a util/drivers cd with flash drive?

Thanks for that info mscrx worked a treat!........only thing now is that my new computer (Vista) recognizes the flash drive and transfers the data to full capacity. However my old computer (XP) doesn't recognize the flash drive anymore? Even when I right click and manage "my computer" only the Hard Drive is displayed and I've tried reassigning another letter to the device, but it still isn't there in XP yet it is with Vista?

Any thoughts?


Thanks.

 

[AlbertLionheart]

You may have to use the old trick of using Win98SE to format the drive so that XP can see it. If you use XP to format it, Vista should see it, but not always the other way round.

 

[mscrx]

since gparted is a linux based cd/tool it makes no sense that the flash drive is only recognized in vista but not in xp.
did you put the flash drive in the viste computer before you tried it with the xp one? I had that a couple of times my flash drives were working fine in xp and after I used them in vista they didn't work in xp any longer.
anyway does xp recognize the drive at all? I mean can you see it in the device manager? or does nothing happen?

 

[crf]

For some reason it wasn't allowing me to enable the device in "manage computer". Some how after a few reboots it finally enabled the device and now all is working...........I finally bring this annoying subject to a close.

Thanks everyone for your help, I really do appreciate it.