How to Reformat a Flash Drive

Formatting a flash drive is not always the first thing on a consumer's mind when they purchase a new one.  However, depending on the software on the flash drive, the computers you are using and the type of data being saved, you may find the software on the flash drive itself conflicts with what you are doing.  If this is the case, reformatting the flash drive to eliminate the pre-installed software and start from scratch is the key to getting the most out of your flash drive.

The easiest way to reformat a flash drive is to use the pre-built Windows option to do just that. In order to start, plug in your flash drive and close any program that opens up to use the flash drive. For example, SanDisk flash drives come with what is called a U3 Launcher program that helps navigate the flash drive, install applications onto it and set up password protection. This will auto-run in the background and sit in the task bar, exit this program and leave the flash drive plugged into your computer.

From there, you want to go to My Computers and right-click on the flash drive to bring up the context menu. You will see the option Format, click on that. Once opened, you will be able to set the options for the reformat. In most cases, you will do a complete reformat that includes setting up the flash drive as FAT32 allocation drive. This is the most common type of hard drive hierarchy. Do not click on the quick format option as this will miss critical files needing to be destroyed on the flash drive in order to empty it completely.

Finally, once formatted, you want to unplug the flash drive, plug it back in and see that it worked.  Not all flash drives will allow you to truly reformat its contents, but if it worked, nothing will happen.  You will have to manually open the flash drive from My Computers and simply drag and drop files and folders from there.  This will be how the flash drive operates from that point on.