Repairing USB Flash Drive: FAT32 or NFTS?

Hey guys,

I have a USB Flash Drive, specifically a Pretec i-Disk Bulletproof 1GB. It has been experiencing a problem for the past few months. Whenever I copy a new file onto the drive, it shows up and occupies space, but once I remove the drive and insert it again (to my notebook, or another PC), the file is not there.

I ran thorough scans using NIS 2010, as well as error-checked the drive using the native Vista program, but nothing has fixed the problem.

There's no other option for me but to reformat the flash drive.

Would the local Vista reformatting utility be good enough to fix the problem? Or is there another program (preferably freeware) anyone can recommend?

Also, my flash drive is currently formatted to FAT32. I've read a couple of other sites that have said that NTFS is better in terms of security, space efficiency, and reliability (less prone to disk errors).

Should I format it to NTFS this time? Or stick with FAT32?

Thanks for any suggestions...

 

NTFS although possible, is not recommended for use in removable media, particularly usb flash drives.

If you have a hardware failure in the drive, no software tricks will get around it.

If you've lost files once, it will happen again.

 

For USB drives, I would stick to FAT32, as newsposter suggested. You could try reformatting, but if the problem continues to occur, then the issue could be hardware-based - your USB drive may be failing.

 

For a 1GB drive, i'd stick with FAT32. I only use NTFS on flash drives if they are 8GB+.

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I reformatted it to FAT32 with an allocation unit size of 4096 bytes. Tested it again and it works fine. Seems that it was just a matter of reformatting the drive.