SanDisk Extreme USB flash drive NTFS vs Fat32

[nadeejalm]

I recently bought 16gb version of this flash drive and it came factory formatted to Fat32. Now I want to format it to NTFS because of the file size limits of Fat32.
But according to an internet source formatting to NTFS can wear out flash drives quickly. So I like to know if this is true and if its unsafe to go for NTFS.
Another concern of mine is data transfer performance of NTFS compared to Fat32. I personally had experiences of reduced transfer speeds when using NTFS file system on flash drives.
I heard that by using higher allocation unit size like in a Fat32 system, when formatting to NTFS can reduce this issue and get faster transfer speeds. If this is true what allocation unit size is suitable for my 16gb flash drive?
Is it ok to use windows default formatting tool to do this or is there a better 3rd party software for formatting?
Also can anyone recommend me a good tool to find out factory default formatting settings of a flash drive?

 

[trekzone]

Hi,

I would preferably format it to NTFS unless you intend to use your flash drive to a machine that doesn't understand NTFS yet. You can simply use the windows default format tool and just select the default allocation size. Or you can use this HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool if you want to restore it to the default factory format.

 

[nadeejalm]

hi thanks for the reply. What's the allocation unit size I should choose when formatting to NTFS?

 

[trekzone]

You can simply select Default Allocation Size under the Allocation Unit Size drop down menu of the Windows Format Tool or select 4096 bytes.

 

[jensrobot]

Hi,

I would preferably format it to NTFS unless you intend to use your flash drive to a machine that doesn't understand NTFS yet. You can simply use the windows default format tool and just select the default allocation size. Or you can use this HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool if you want to restore it to the default factory format.

Hi, I am somewhat confused about your reply. HDD means hard-disk DRIVE. Are you sure you can low-level format usb sticks?
I've had trouble with my sandisk extreme 64gb after unsafe removal in caching mode on windows 7. I had to reformat with diskpart to get a decent transfer speed. Standard windows format (default allocation) was a disaster. I could not get above 30mbsec, device was unresponsive at times. After diskpart it is at least a steady 100mbsec, and stable. So I still got some work to do