What is the best file system and allocation size for a USB flash drive?

Solution 1:

I personally experience more speed with NTFS (than FAT32) on my 8 GB USB stick (and yes, I use NTFS-3G on Linux, and the ntfs-stuff from MacFuse as well as Windows). But you could just format the stick either way and benchmark with this.

FAT32:

fat32

And NTFS:

ntfs

Result: just minimal more speed with NTFS (Windows 7), I experienced a bit more speed on Windows XP with NTFS. anyway, benchmark it yourself.