Allow NTFS formatting a USB drive

This is the easiest way to NTFS format your USB drive within XP. I've found this on the net.

Note: After NTFS formatting, you always have to use Safe Removal, you can't quick remove your drive!

Excuse my mistakes, I'm from Hungary :)

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Step 1: Run Device Manager

Get to Run in Start menu, and type devmgmt.msc, then press OK.

Ted_lens says: Apr 13, 2009. 9:56 AM

Why would you want to do this, is it faster in any way or something?

upriverpaddler in reply to Ted_lensApr 14, 2009. 9:45 AM

I did this with a drive because I wanted to store some image files (FAT won't accept single files >4gB). It made data transfers of other files on the drive noticeably slower. The only advantage to going NTFS that I am aware of is the file size restriction in FAT.

liteoner (author) in reply to Ted_lensApr 14, 2009. 2:35 AM

I don't know, but it decreases the lifetime of the drive, because it's a journaling format. Your HDDs are formatted NTFS, if you're using Windows.

rimar2000 says: Apr 11, 2009. 4:26 PM

This seems nice. Thanks, I will try this.

cyrozap says: Apr 11, 2009. 12:36 PM

The only problem with this setup is that because of the way NTFS journaling works, the USB drive will not last as long as it normally would. USB drives have a limited number of read/write cycles, and because NTFS is a journaling file system (meaning that disk transactions are logged separately on the disk as they occur), there is much more disk activity, leading to a shorter drive life. On the other hand, the life span of heavily used flash memory is measured in years, so this isn't that much of a problem. A plus of using NTFS is that you can now install Windows on to the USB drive. Good, simple Instructable.