This article demonstrates a few methods you can implement to reinstall your USB drivers and hopefully get your drives in working order. Before we begin, it’s important to note that there’s a difference between a USB Device Driver and a USB Drive. A USB Device driver is a set of instructions that is used to operate a particular device such as an external hard drive or mouse, while a USB drive is simply a device that is often used for storage purposes and can be formatted for different purposes. Both can become corrupted and it’s important that both are formatted properly for devices to work the way they’re intended.
Reformatting a USB Drive
A USB drive, or “flash drive” as they’re sometimes known, is a small device with flash memory that acts as an external storage unit for data such as documents and pictures. If you’re using Windows, the steps to reformat a drive for use with a different file system or for different purposes are listed below.
- Connect the USB drive to your computer after the machine has been turned on.
- Allow the device to connect and wait for either a “ding” sound that confirms the device’s connection, or wait for a popup window on the bottom right of the taskbar to confirm that the driver for the device has successfully installed.
- With the device connected, navigate to “My Computer” either in the Start menu or from your desktop.
- With My Computer open, you should see a subsection of drives in addition to your main hard drive called “Devices with Removable Storage.”
- Right click on the USB device you have connected and choose the “Format” option.
- Choose your options from the drop down menus (or leave everything as default), and click “Start.”
Now, before we continue, it’s important to understand what all of the options for your drive formatting actually mean.
NTFS: An NTFS file system is designed for drives that generally handle file sizes bigger than 2 to 4GB. The NTFS file system is larger than the other options available and will take up extra space on the drive that you may not have. However, it is generally better at space management and can help organize larger files on a small device such as an external hard drive. NTFS is not recommended for small USB devices that are below 32GB, as it’s a bit slower than the other options.
FAT/FAT32: FAT file systems take up much less space on USB devices but cannot handle files bigger than 4GB in size. If you’re planning on transferring movies that are bigger than 4GB or other files that are large in nature, FAT is not for you. However, if you only wish to transfer documents and small files, FAT is generally quicker than other options and uses less memory.
exFAT: Lastly, exFAT combines the organization and large file size capabilities of NTFS and combines it with the speed of FAT32. If you have the option to format as exFAT, do so.
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