Bob, from Rutland, VA asks:
How do you reformat a flash drive?
The same way that you reformat ANY drive, Pinky… BY TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
Sorry, been watching too much “Pinky and the Brain” lately.
Actually, Bob, a flash drive can be reformatted the same way as any other drive. Start by going to “Computer”, right-click on the drive, and then click on “format”.
Once there, you have the choice of whether or not to choose a “quick” format. Unless you’re trying to seriously hide stuff from someone (in which case shame on you) then a quick format should be adequate. Click “start”.
Once it says “format complete”, you’re ready to go.
Hope that these help.
~Randal Schaffer
Tags: flash drive, format
Mark’s absolutely right, Tom. Reformatting is extremely harsh and WILL reduce the life of your flash drive? By how much? As far as I know, this is impossible or nearly impossible to quantify in any kind of real numbers. It depends on the quality of the flash drive to begin with, as well as the size of the drive and whether you do a quick format or a full format. For the most part, it is just better to delete the files. But my answer was to the question “How do you format a flash drive”, and not “is it better to reformat a flash drive or simply to delete the files?”. I will bear your comment in mind for future articles, though, Mark. I could definitely have addressed the issues and written a more comprehensive article.
Randal
Hi, Artie.
I’m not sure that I’m understanding your question right. Are you asking if it’s better to delete one file at a time than to delete them all at once? The answer to that is no. But it will extend the life of your flash drive (although i can’t say by how much) to simply delete the files (even all at once) than it would be to reformat the drive every time that you want to clear it.
Hope this helps.
Randal