It’s a good question; format a USB flash drive as exFAT or NTFS? There are several reasons not to format as NTFS and we’ll explain.

Most of the Time you are Okay

Most of the time, formatting a flash drive is a very simple decision. There are only two situations where you should carefully consider what format to use. Here are the details:

Note: This article is focused on Windows and Mac operating systems.

The file formats available for a USB flash drive are:

• FAT (also called FAT16)
• FAT32
• exFAT
• NTFS
• HFS (Mac only)

Flash drive manufacturers typically format a drive as either FAT or FAT32. Any device of 2GB or smaller will be formatted as FAT, and any USB over 2GB will be formatted as FAT32.

These two formats are the best file systems for removable drives like USB flash drives because they support quick disconnect functionality. Chances are very slim that you will destroy the device or files if you unplug the USB without using the Eject function (in Windows) or the Un-mount function (in Mac).

The one huge limitation with FAT and FAT32 is the single file size limit. If a single file is larger than 2GB, you need FAT32. If you have a single file bigger than 4GB, you must use NTFS or exFAT. Typically, these large files are video files or restore image files (for restoring a computer operating system from a single image file).

USB stick manufacturers will rejoice with this news.  No longer will their flash memory be limited with the FAT32 file system, but rather an unlimited size of storage space.

Up to this point FAT file systems had a limitation of 4GB for a single file size and up to 32GBs for an entire volume.  But no more.  Microsoft has released a new exFAT file system.  This means our USB sticks will become supersized and no longer need to worry about dynamic file structures of NTFS.  With USB memory getting bigger each year, this is great news for mobile storage.

On January 27 2009, Microsoft released their new exFAT file system.  Or extended File Allocation Table [exFAT]. Here is some information off the Microsoft website:

The exFAT file system is the successor to FAT32 in the FAT family of file systems. The exFAT file system is a new file format system to address the growing demand and size of mobile storage like USB sticks, PDAs, and solid state hard drives. What’s nice about the exFAT file system