# Necessary to format new USB thumb drive?



## klingcam (Nov 13, 2010)

Just bought an 8GB USB flash drive primarily to load music for my car. *Is it necessary to format it (FAT32 or other), or can I just drag and drop folders and songs?*
Also, if I decide to add data files (Excel spreads, Word dox, etc.), do I need to partition it somehow so that my car stereo does not get confused? If so, how?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional , 64 bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5 (OC'd to 3.7Ghz)
Processor Count: 8
RAM: 6142 Mb
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series , 1024 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 953762 MB, Free - 910998 MB; E: Total - 1907726 MB, Free - 1678442 MB; 
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd., X58A-UD3R, x.x, 
Antivirus: Trend Micro AntiVirus, Updated and Enabled


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## vietguy357 (Nov 2, 2010)

You'll have to check your car manual to see which format your usb and music need to be. Also check to see if the music has to be in a certain folder or not. As for excel and things as such, I think you can just put them into a seperate folder.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Formatting drives is never as important as partitioning them. Generally, thumb drives come pre-partitioned and formatted as FAT32 (or FAT if small). But it never hurts to repartition and reformat with the opeating system that will use the drive (primarily) to insure compatibility.

This tool repartitions and reformats:

HP USB Disk Format Tool

Toshiba machines have a USB format tool installed, too.


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## klingcam (Nov 13, 2010)

Thanks for the reply. Greatly appreciated.


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## klingcam (Nov 13, 2010)

Elvandil said:


> Formatting drives is never as important as partitioning them. Generally, thumb drives come pre-partitioned and formatted as FAT32 (or FAT if small). But it never hurts to repartition and reformat with the opeating system that will use the drive (primarily) to insure compatibility.
> 
> This tool repartitions and reformats:
> 
> ...


Thanks for the help. I appreciate it. Does the HP USB Disk Format Tool work for Win 7 64-bit?


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## Courtneyc (Dec 7, 2003)

Except in one case, don't format the thumb drive. All thumb drives come pre-formatted and yes, you can harm it by formatting it. In any case, it isn't necessary.

The one exception is if the manufacturer decided to add a separate partition on the drive to make it look like a CD Rom. Format that crap out of there. You can use the standard formatting commands in Windows (regardless of the version). If you do format it, format it in FAT32. 

Courtney


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