How to Reprogram Flash Drives

Flash drives are easily reformatted for better performance.

The flash drive has effectively become the most convenient way to store and transport data from one place to another, easily outpacing floppy disk drives and even CDs and DVDs. When working with multiple computers operating in a variety of formats, such as Apple, PC and UNIX, it is sometimes helpful to reprogram your flash drive to work better within one type of computing environment. This can also help energize an old and lagging flash drive that is no longer functioning as well as it used to.

Instructions

1. Insert your flash drive into the USB drive of your computer. Remove all data that you wish to save by copying it onto your hard drive in a secure location. Access your Disk Utility, which is located in the System Preferences section on Mac computers and the Control Panel on Windows machines.

2. Highlight your particular flash drive and browse the available options to find one that best fits your drive situation. You can try to repair the drive if there is a problem, and then you can de-fragment the drive to restructure the storage components so that they are in their best possible working order.

3. Choose from a list of formatting possibilities displayed when de-fragmenting the drive is chosen. You will have the option to format the drive as FAT32, a Windows-based system that works well with both Windows and Mac computers, or a Mac format, which provides better performance when used with Mac computers, but does not perform with Windows. You can also choose from extended or journaled configurations, which allow you to save more data on the drive at the cost of a small amount of speed.

4. Allow the drive time to reformat. This usually takes between a few seconds and an hour, depending on the size of the drive. After the reformatting is completed, eject the drive and remove it, then plug it back in and test it by adding some files to the drive. Make sure that the drive is functioning properly and that the data is transferred completely by plugging it into another device and accessing the files. Check the size of the new drive as well to make sure that the new format utilized all of the available space and the drive was not formatted to the wrong size by mistake.

Tips & Warnings

• Never remove the drive during the formatting process or without ejecting, as this can destroy the data on the drive and sometimes irrevocably damage the drive itself.

References

• Memory-Card-Recovery: USB Flash Drive