Flash Voyager GT 16: formatting best practices?

[captainmidnight]

My last Flash Voyager GT 8 died a couple of weeks ago, and Corsair sent me a Flash Voyager GT 16 as a replacement. (This was the second time the Flash Voyager GT 8 had to be replaced--the 8 was great when it worked, but was flaky...Thanks for your good customer support, however, Corsair.)

 

I definitely need to be able to work with files > 4 GB in size. I do not need a bootable drive at this point.

 

With my old Flash Voyager GT 8, I simply formatted the entire drive as a single NTFS partition. So, without thinking much, when I pulled the newly arrived Flash Voyager GT 16 out of its box this evening, and saw that it was FAT32 formatted, I went ahead and reformatted this new Flash Voyager GT 16 as a single NTFS partition.

 

I did have a hiccup: I needed to change the device's policy from quick removal to optimize for speed in order to be allowed to format it as NTFS. Does that sound right? I avoided Quick Format, but it seemed to format very quickly nonetheless; I recall it taking longer, which has me worried...

 

And the way that I formatted it was by executing this from a dos shell:

format g: /fs:NTFS  /v:DriveFlash1 /x

 

But I began wondering soon after if this is the best idea or not.

 

Here are some specific questions:

 

1) is NTFS really that bad for modern flash drives? Will it really have bad performance and/or shorten the life of my drive?

 

2) if NTFS is ok, is the formatting that I did above correct? I saw some threads here advocate using third party formaters, but no reason was given why.

 

3) if you tell me that NTFS is no good, and to use exFAT instead, I guess that I will need to download this driver in order to use the drive on my two XP machines at home, right?

 

4) but if I do 3), then I may have a ton of issues if I try and use the drive on other people's XP boxes, right? In this case, I was thinking that maybe I could partition the drive into a FAT32 partition with 1-4 GB on it, which would contain this driver (so could install it if needed), and then have exFAT on the remaining 11-14 GB. Is this a good idea? If so, what would you use to partition the flash drive?

 

Thanks in advance!

[RAM GUY]

1) is NTFS really that bad for modern flash drives? Will it really have bad performance and/or shorten the life of my drive?

A: No it is just that NTFS is not optimized for FLASH devices and its not as efficient as fat 32 on a flash drive, it will not hurt the drive per say but it may shorten its life.

 

2) if NTFS is ok, is the formatting that I did above correct? I saw some threads here advocate using third party formaters, but no reason was given why.

A: Yes that was correct.

 

3) if you tell me that NTFS is no good, and to use exFAT instead, I guess that I will need to download this driver in order to use the drive on my two XP machines at home, right?

A: Windows XP will not support exFat, but if there is a utility that will allow it to be sued in WinXP got for it. The flash drive will not care what file system you use other than what I have already stated.

 

4) but if I do 3), then I may have a ton of issues if I try and use the drive on other people's XP boxes, right? In this case, I was thinking that maybe I could partition the drive into a FAT32 partition with 1-4 GB on it, which would contain this driver (so could install it if needed), and then have exFAT on the remaining 11-14 GB. Is this a good idea? If so, what would you use to partition the flash drive?

A: NO Windows will not support partitioning a removable drive and it will only see the active partition.

[captainmidnight]

A: No it is just that NTFS is not optimized for FLASH devices and its not as efficient as fat 32 on a flash drive, it will not hurt the drive per say but it may shorten its life.

 

Good to know that my format worked.

 

Any comments on my observation that I needed to change the device's policy from quick removal to optimize for speed in order to be allowed to format it as NTFS--is that typical?

 

 

A: Windows XP will not support exFat, but if there is a utility that will allow it to be sued in WinXP got for it.

 

Are you sure about that answer? Did you look at that link from Microsoft that I provided? It claims to be a "extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) file system drivers for Windows XP and for Windows Server 2003"

[RAM GUY]

Good to know that my format worked.

 

Any comments on my observation that I needed to change the device's policy from quick removal to optimize for speed in order to be allowed to format it as NTFS--is that typical

?

A: That is normal because of the default settings for removable drives, IE Windows does not support partitioning a removable drive.

 

Are you sure about that answer? Did you look at that link from Microsoft that I provided? It claims to be a "extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) file system drivers for Windows XP and for Windows Server 2003"

A: Windows XP will not support exFat, but if there is a utility that will allow it to be used in WinXP got for it. The flash drive will not care what file system you use other than what I have already stated.