How Tell How USB Drive Is Formatted? FAT 32 or NTFS

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How can one tell how a USB thumbnail drive (or whatever you call those little memory sticks) is formatted?

I think the two possibilities are FAT32 and NTFS.



On a related note: If required, how can one format them, or change the formatting on them?

If you are using Windows, use the Disk Management section (right click My Computer -> Manage). It will tell you how it is formated.

You can change the format, but you will want to have a copy of the data elsewhere as it will wipe all information when you format it.

A more direct route would be to right click the drive itself in "my computer"/"computer" and look at the general tab. You can format it from the right click menu as well.

It's worth pointing out that IF the thumbdrive is formatted FAT32 and you go to NTFS it will be less likely to work across different computing platforms (OSx to WIN to *nix) I don't know if this is a consideration for you or not. In college my buddies all like different platforms and I ran into this issue when i formatted an 8GB drive to NTFS so I could move a DVD .iso and it was a bit of a fail.

Roger. It's a FAT32.

I thinking about using it to update the BIOS on a new ASUS computer build I just made. I have to check again how they want it formatted. Apparently, it matters.

Most lower level "things" that can read storage will only read FAT filesystems. Especially USB connected devices. For example: my blu-ray player needs the flash drive to be FAT32 formatted for its firmware updates. Not that it matters because it still won't play certain BDs. Glad the PS3 works with EVERYTHING.