Format USB disk graphic mode and Windows 10, 8, 7 commands

Sometimes we require the formatting of our USB drive for reasons such as viruses, free space, modify the file system, among others, and although the traditional way we do this task is to right click on the drive and selecting the Format option, there are moments in which this option does not format us the USB memory as we wish and for that reason we must resort to third-party tools for that and we do not know that Windows includes its own tools to execute this task in full.

Using the command prompt guarantees us a complete and truthful formatting of the USB device and thus avoiding the message displayed by the system, “Windows could not complete the format” either due to problems with the device or errors of the Operating System itself.

A file system allows the organization of a disk or drive as it will be responsible for defining how the data will be saved and what type of information can be attached to the files as permissions or name. When we format an external or internal drive, Windows offers us the option of applying 3 different file systems: FAT32, NTFS and exFAT. If you have ever encountered the doubt of not knowing which one to choose, here we will see the differences.

What is NTFS

NTFS (New Technology File System) is the File System that Windows uses by default for the storage and recovery of files within a disk. It is a fully compatible system within all versions of Windows, but it only has a reading character on Mac. Within the NTFS features we can highlight:

• Performs an integrated file compression

• Assigned names support Unicode support

• It allows data security either on internal or external disk to help data recovery.

• It draws on the scheme outlined in the b-tree directory to follow the clusters

• Information about a file cluster is saved next to each of them and not in a table like in FAT.

• Use an ACL or access control list to filter who can access certain files.

NTFS advantages

Compared to the other two photomats, NTFS has the following advantages:

• Perform file encryption at the moment using EFS

• You can create partitions larger than 32 GB

• Thanks to less fragmentation, space is better managed

• You can read and write files larger than 4 GB

• Perform automatic file compression to get more space

• Lets waste less space thanks to an organization in clusters of larger units

• You can add permissions individually to files or folders

What is FAT32?

The FAT 32 (File Allocation Table 32) system is geared towards the use of storage media such as USB, SD or hard drives. From its name, 32 is extracted as the amount of data bits used for the identification of clusters in the medium. Its birth dates from 1996 under FAT and its objective was to be used on floppy disks, but over time it became somewhat obsolete and was also oriented to formatting disks. It is one of the most popular systems due to its global extension of use.

FAT32 advantages

Although it seems to us an outdated system, the truth is that thanks to its advantages FAT 32 has managed to stay in time.

• It has compatibility with a wide range of devices such as mobiles, tablets, cameras, consoles, computers

• It takes up little space in the unit

• Performs fewer operations when writing to disk, so memory usage is reduced.

• Its compatibility is its great advantage. In software, its compatibility starts in 1995 and it is currently supported for reading and writing on macOS and Unix (including Linux or FreeBSD) in addition to the obvious Windows.

• Limit files in 4GB and up to 8TB partition size.

What is exFAT

exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) is a file system designed to be used on removable memories such as USB or SD cards. It is basically a renewed version of the well-known FAT32 and could be classified as a middle position between NTFS and FAT32. The exFAT system emerged as a need to create a file system that worked on new mobile media with limited hardware lighter than NTFS, but somewhat more modern than known FATs. Being a more renewed version its compatibility is limited to more recent versions in the different OS.

ExFAT advantages

The most outstanding advantages of exFAT are the following:

• It is a lightweight system that hardly consumes resources to run

• It is compatible with Windows systems (XP SP3 or Vista SP1 onwards), macOS (X 10.6.5 or higher), Android (As of Android 6), digital devices such as cameras, consoles or mobiles, iOS 7 onwards.

• Supports large partitions of up to 128 pebibytes.

• It allows the storage of very large files where the limit will be that of the partition itself that as we have mentioned can reach 128 pebibytes.

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If you usually use your external disks on Windows computers, the best choice would be to format in NTFS while if you also work with Mac computers, for example, exFAT would offer good compatibility.

1. How to identify the USB drive in Windows 10, 8, 7

The first step consists in, once the device is connected to the equipment, proceed to know the letter that the system has assigned to you to be sure that it is the correct unit during the process at the command prompt. For this we have two alternatives:

Verify drive letter using File Explorer

For this, it is enough to use the following key combination and in the option This device will identify the USB drive connected to the device.

+ E

Verify drive letter using disk manager

For this option we will use the following key combination and in the displayed window enter the command that appears:

+ R

 diskmgmt.msc 

There we will locate our USB drive with its respective letter. We can see that in this case the letter assigned has been K.

2. How to format USB graphic mode with File Explorer Windows 10, 8, 7

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Step 1
The first thing we will do is go to our File Explorer and locate our USB device. Once there, right click on it and select the Format option.

Step 2
Now select File System, FAT32 or NTFS, and click Start to begin formatting the drive.

3. How to format USB graphic mode with Disk Manager Windows 10, 8, 7

Step 1
To open Disk Manager go to Start Menu Windows 10 use one of the following.

Step 2
Now we right click on our USB drive and click on Format.

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Step 3
In this window, select the system you want to grant to your USB memory and click OK.

4. How to format USB mode commands from Command Prompt Windows 10, 8, 7

Step 1
With this in mind we will open a command prompt console using one of the ways we already know and press Enter. Once the command prompt console is opened, we will enter the following syntax:

 format / q / x (Unit): 

In this case it will be

 format / q / x K: 

Step 2
The indicated parameters fulfill the following function:

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that

Run a quick format to the USB drive.

x

This option forces the disassembly of the unit if necessary.

Step 3
When executing this command we will see the following:

Step 4
We can see that the message is displayed: "Insert a new disk in drive K: and press Enter when ready." There we will simply press Enter since the USB drive is still connected to the device. Pressing Enter we will see the following:

Step 5
There the system has detected the current file system, the capacity of the device and in the line Initializing the file allocation tables we see the file system to be established, additionally we can add a label if we wish. Press Enter and we will have the following result. We can see a complete summary of the task executed. This method can be implemented in Windows 7, 8 or 10 and will have the same behavior and result.

In this simple way we can use the command prompt to process the required USB drives. In this way in addition to the classic graphic system for formatting, we also have the command mode.