How to Format a Flash Drive

While the built-in command line method in Windows 7 Ultimate (format [drive letter]:
/FS:FAT32) started running without a problem, it failed to complete. The annoying thing was that it took an hour to fail.

The reason? "The volume is too big for FAT32". It would have been nice for the system to do a simple check when when the command was first launched so I wouldn't go to sleep thinking I'd wake up in the morning to a fully formatted FAT32 80GB drive.

Better, easier way is to just boot to a Linux live CD like Knoppix. I resorted to this after trying to format my 80GB SATA notebook drive (connected via USB enclosure) using the above suggested command line method and having it fail.

Follow these steps:

1. Download Knoppix ISO
2. Burn Knoppix ISO to CD using compatible CD burning software. If you're running Windows 7 you can use the built-in ISO burning capabilities. Otherwise a good freeware program like ImgBurn works.
3. Boot to Knoppix CD. If you're a new to this, you should definitely disconnect any storage devices you don't want formatted since it's not hard to screw this up and destroy your primary operating system.
4. Open a console/terminal window (should be an icon in the "taskbar" area).
5. From terminal window, run sudo gparted. This launches a graphical partition editor similar to Partition Magic. Only difference of course is you don't have to pay Symantec to use it. Gotta love the open source community. But I digress.
6. In GParted, use the drop-down list to select the drive you want to format as FAT32. GParted just calls it "FAT" but it seems to do the trick.
7. Delete any existing partitions on the drive.
8. Right-click the drive and select format. Choose "FAT" as the filesystem type. Label it whatever you like (in my case "80GB_SATA").
9. Click the green arrow to apply all operations, confirm, and off you go!
10. Once finished, GParted will confirm success/failure. Close the program and shutdown/reboot. Your big fat FAT drive should be good to go!

Okay, so it's a lot of steps. But if you're familiar it is easier than trying to make this happen in Windows. Also more reliable and less frustrating. If you want to save yourself a few steps you can also download a live CD of GParted from SourceForge. It can be put on CD or USB drive for convenience.

Monday, 13 August 2018