Have you ever tried formatting a USB Pen drive in NTFS Format? But must not have seen any option for this by default in XP. It allows you to only format your USB Pen Drive in FAT or FAT32. But its quiet easy to format it in NTFS.
NTFS allows you encrypting your data which is a feature that is inbuilt in Windows XP and above. It also lets you to add allow and deny permissions on individual files and folders for specific Windows users, something you can’t think of using FAT file systems.
But on the rear side, NTFS file system won’t get detected in most LINUX systems.
However using NTFS file system also increases your performance and reliability.
So here it is How To Format Your USB Pen Drive In NTFS File System:
Plug in your USB device to any free USB port of you computer.
01. Now click on Start Menu button:
And you will see My Computer icon there. Right Click on it and click on Manage:
02. Once in Computer Management, click on Device Manager and a list will pop up in right hand side window:
03. Now click on Disk Drives, select your USB Pen Drive, Right Click on it and select Properties:
04. This will take you to the properties of your pen drive. Once there, click on Policies Tab. Followed by clicking on Optimize for performance and then finally click on OK button:
05. Now click on My Computer icon on your desktop:
After opening My Computer, Right Click on your USB Pen Drive and select Format:
06. Click on File system drop down menu and you will see 3 options now. Select NTFS and click on Start button to convert it to NTFS File system:
All Done!
Now you USB Pen Drive is in NTFS file format, you can either compress the data in it or can encrypt the data.
If you have any problem or questions then feel free to ask me.
If you enjoy this post, make sure you 
Awesome post mate! I think you must write one more post for telling how to encrypt and secure data in pen drive.
Ashish
Thanks for the appreciation :) Will surely write a post regarding that ;)
appreciated……thx for sharing the knowledge….
Its my pleasure buddy :)
very good…lalu..
lol :P thanks :D
this doesnt allways work as it will come back saying that the format cant be completed
Well buddy, I never had such problem. May be you firstly format your pen drive with Fat32 and get it scanned with antivirus and then try reformatting.
Hope this helps :)
Perfect…ntfs
Thanks
Thanks For Sharing Such an excellent tip.
Regards
Jenney MaC
Its my pleasure friend :)
Good Tutorial! It was chosen for the home page of http://www.tutorialsroom.com
Waiting for your next tutorial :)
Woot! Thanks buddy for adding my tutorial to your homepage here:
Tutorials Room
I am thankful :D
Great post. I’m a thumb drive addict with about 25+ of those handy devices. They are great for about everything, but I seem to just store photos on them.
Thanks Jeff, glad you liked it ;)
i have formatted to NTFS to my pen drive, it had problem in detect in some desktop and laptops but detect well in my laptop then formatted in FAT but problem remain same
What problem are you facing buddy, can you please be detailed.
Hi all,need your help here…?
i have 4gb kingston pendrive..and i set my pendrive drive name to ‘myname’.i already used my pendrive 1.4gb.and got a lots important files..when i plug in the pendrive,it will automatic install driver ‘kingston datatraveler 2.0 usb device’.my problem is,when i plug out the pendrive and plug in back,it install driver ‘usb disk 30x usb device’ and my pendrive name change from ‘myname’ to ‘removable disk’.and when i rightclick to properties,my pendrive change to,used space 0bytes,free space 0bytes,file system unknown.i try to scandisk my pendrive,and it cant do it,when i click ok at scandisk,it suddenly close..i try also to check with avg antivirus,it shows ‘cannot open;not checked’.
can anyone help my problem?other than format the drive.please….really need your help….
omg thank you so so much for sharing this. u've made my day! :D
@Anonymous please try and scan your pen drive with eset nod32 antivirus or kaspersky antivirus.
Hey this actually really cool. I have some large over 4gb torrents that would benefit from this.
nice post :)
I have a drive I have been unable to format as NTFS since I have had it. I have tried the XP method, tried Vista and also W7 to no avail. It just says 'unable to complete format', or something to those words. I have scanned with NOD and all the boxes tick, no files.
Do you have any suggestions for me please?
Thanks
Oneill
As far as my experience says, it is damaged physically so it wont be usable anymore though I can't be sure.
But how can that be when the drive is usable as FAT and will store 16GB with limits on the file size?
I doubt if I can tell you without seeing it. Sorry buddy.
THNX A TON…
Problem fixed. I was having trouble transfering some files over for back-up… well some files… and I tried this handy trick and wallah – it works now. I got my usb drive about a month ago and it hasn’t worked properly until now…
Thank you