Although I knew that formatting my flash drive would effectively erase my flash drive, I never knew that this tool could also be used to ensure compatibility on both PC and Apple computers. Because I frequent plenty of computer labs, I have definitely been in the situation where I needed access to a PC, but the only thing available was a Mac. Fortunately, after formatting my flash drive (in the way the article detailed) I can now use my files anywhere, which is quite convenient.
The actual process of formatting the flash drive was actually very familiar, as I had gone through most of the steps before when clearing out old flash drives. I simply stuck my flash drive into the USB port, and then located it in the "My Computer" section. From there, however, the process is just slightly different. You right-click your flash drive, and then select "NTFS" or "Fat 32" as your format.
However, as states at the end of the article, if you want to ensure compatibility with a Mac, you will need to use FAT 16 for any flash drive under 256 MB. This was of great help to me, as the flash drive I was using was 256 MB and I was able to sucessfully format it to the smaller standard.
Another bit of useful information in this How-To is the alternate formatting process. Although I was able to use the first Windows-based method rather effectively, it is nice to know that there is another way to do it in case your OS starts acting up.
Re-formatting my flash drive was a very easy process, and even though I knew a lot about it beforehand, I have to say that the extra tips certainly are helpful for the pro formatter. As one who craves cross-compatibility and is a fan of the backup plan, there were plenty of clear and conscise tips to follow if you need a certain type of formatting.
Although I am not a user, I was also happy to see instructions for Linux in this How-To. Linux is definitely under-represented in most troubleshooting/how-to computing articles, so it was great to see instructions for this underdog platform.
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