Formatting Flash drive

Nov 26, 2005
15,194
403
126
reformatting my flash drive and "Restore device defaults" on most all my Flash drives sets the File System to FAT while my systems are NTFS (win7 64)

Will this harm anything leaving the Flash drives in FAT and transferring files from a NTFS machine to FAT then back to NTFS (transferring files from one machine to another *small time stuff*) ?
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
27,370
240
106
No harm at all. In order to be bootable in some systems, FAT is required.
 

Auric

Diamond Member
Oct 11, 1999
9,591
2
71
The only downside is the file size limit of around 4GB which is the main reason to instead use exFAT or NTFS but at the loss of device compatibility and bootability as said. Otherwise the format does not really affect the files.