How to Format USB Flash Drive to NTFS in Windows 10/8/7?

Introduction of NTFS

NTFS (New Technology File System) is a standard file system for Windows NT and then developed in Windows versions like Vista, XP. It replaces the file allocation table (FAT) file system and provides a file system for Microsoft's Windows family of operating systems. And NTFS made several improvements to FAT and HPFS (High Performance File System), for example, to support metadata, and used advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability, and disk space utilization. Besides, it provided several additional extensions such as access control lists (ACLs) and file system logs. And NTFS has no limiting size of single files and it owns the top capacity of 256TB for partition size.

Why you need to format USB flash drive to NTFS?

If you have ever tried to format a USB flash drive, you may have noticed that the default format of USB drive is FAT32. But the maximum file size of a single file in FAT32 is 4GB and the limitation of partition capacity is 2TB. so, if you want to copy some large files to a FAT32 USB drive, Windows will give you an error message saying the file is too large for destination file system or flash drive not have enough free space but there is plenty. However, NTFS has no limiting size of single files and has large capacity of partition size. Thus, format USB flash drive to NTFS is necessary. Besides, people need to choose the certain file systems in different situations for better performance. So, some users might try to format or change flash drive to NTFS.

How to format USB flash drive to NTFS?

You may be puzzled about how to format USB flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS, here provides you three methods to do this operation.

Method 1. Format USB drive to NTFS in Windows 10/8/7 with Disk Management

1. Right click “My Computer” and select “Manage”.

2. Open the Device Manage and find your USB flash drive under the Disk Drives heading.

3. Then, right click it and select “Properties”.

4. After that, choose “Policies” tab and select “Optimize for performance”, then click “OK”.

5. Then, open “My Computer” and select “Format” on the flash drive.

6. Now, choose “NTFS” in the file system drop-down box.

7. Finally, click “Start” button and wait it finish.

Method 2. Convert the USB flash drive to NTFS in Windows 10/8/7 with command line

If there are large number of files on the USB drive and there is no more free space for you to move them, you can directly convert the flash drive to NTFS without formatting or losing data. For safety, you can back up important data in advance too.

1. Run Command Prompt as administrator.

2. Type convert (drive letter): /FS:NTFS. For example, the drive letter of your USB drive is G, you should type convert G: /FS:NTFS.

After these two simple steps, Windows will start the file system converting job. This may take some time.

Method 3. Format USB flash drive to NTFS in Windows 10/8/7 with a third party USB format tool

If the solutions mentioned above do not help, you can turn to the third method-use a third party USB format tool to format USB flash drive to NTFS in Windows 10/8/7. Compare with other software, here I highly recommend free AOMEI Partition Assistant-the best USB format tool which provide you many powerful functions like format partition. You can use it to format USB flash drive, SD card, as well as other storage drive in Windows 10/8/7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. The following example will show you how to format USB flash drive to NTFS in Windows 7. Let’s see the specific steps:

First of all, please connect your USB drive to your computer and make sure it can be detected.

Step 1. Download, install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right click the partition on your USB flash drive and select “Format Partition”.

Step 2. In the pop-up window, choose “NTFS” from drop-down menu next to “File System”. you also can specify “Cluster Size” under file system if you need to. Then click “OK” to continue.

Step 3. Then, it will go back to the main interface. Preview the virtual result and click “Apply” > “Proceed” after your confirmation.

* If your USB drive shows up as unallocated space, you can right click it and select “Create Partition”. In this way, you can directly create a NTFS partition too.

Conclusion

Follow these simple steps, you can format USB flash drive to NTFS in Windows 10/8/7 easily and effectively. AOMEI Partition Assistant can be the best USB format tool. Besides format/create partition, it also has many other powerful functions like resize/move/delete partition, rebuild MBR, disk copy, convert to NTFS, wipe hard drive, and so on. If there are some important data on the USB flash drive that you don’t want to lose them, the feature of convert to NTFS can help you to convert USB from Fat32 to NTFS. To avoid data loss caused by some special situations, you can back up important data in advance. If you meet the problem about c drive full in Windows 10/8/7, you can upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional to solve this issue.