How do I format removable disk as NTFS?

[NeoPTLD]

I have a removable rewritable optical drive I got from a surplus sale. It's an external USB1.1 drive and even though I can see literature for previledges on NTFS formatted disks, I can't format mine to NTFS.

I go into disk management and there are only two options for format type. FAT and FAT32. Does USB connected drive simply don't support NTFS formatting?

I'm using Win XP Pro SP2

 

[VirtualLarry]

Normally, you cannot format a removable-media drive as NTFS. Windows' explicitly prevents you. I think that there is a tool on the sysinternals.com web site that will allow you to work around that. Their example lets you format a floppy disk to NTFS, I believe.

Also, if the drive is a DVD-RAM drive, I believe that those discs come pre-formatted as some sort of FAT format, I'm not sure if you can reformat them or not.

 

[thorin]

Check this:
http://www.sysinternals.com/nt...eware/ntfsfloppy.shtml

 

[Auric]

Maybe it can be UDF formatted with appropriate drivers, which is preferred over FAT32.

 

[Antoneo]

Why is this the case? Is it because NTFS is inefficient with smaller disk sizes (in cluster size (which doesn't make sense) or performance)? 😕 Or is it because the proliferation of small usb based drives was not forseen?

 

[gwai lo]

I think part of it is for security reasons...because fat32 would void the NTFS security features.