Flash Drives - should be formatted NTFS?

Should Flash Drives be formatted NTFS? What are the Pros & Cons of doing so?


  • Portability: the drive will be unreadable by computers running Windows 95, 98 or Me, (some)Linux, or any other non-Windows device.
  • Longevity: NTFS will shorten the life of the drive. It is a journalling file system, which means that it logs changes, not just the end result, causing more writes to the drive. It also logs last access times for files, so even a read causes a write access. Flash memory has a lifespan of only about 100,000 writes.
  • Ease of access: NTFS records the owner of a file, so you are likely to see “Access denied” messages if you try to access the file on another computer. This could be regarded as a benefit, but it's actually just an inconvenience, as the data is not encrypted. If you want to secure the data on your USB memory sticks from prying eyes you should use encryption.

Well, the main advantages of NTFS over FAT32 (the usual choice for flash drives are):

  1. better for very large partitions (bigger clusters, files >2GB possible)
  2. filesystem permissions
  3. journaled, thus better crash recovery

1 & 2 only matter for very big flash drives (several GB), so not usually an issue. 3 is relevant if you frequently "forget" to do a "safe removal".

On the other hand, FAT32 is much more widely supported than NTFS. So I'd say:

  • if you have a very large flash drive, or often forget the safe removal, use NTFS
  • if you might ever have to use the drive on someon else's computer, use FAT32