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.