Windows 7: Memory Stick Question?

I bought my FIRST Memory Stick, 16GB, to use wehn I uprgrade from W'7 Trial Version to Retail Version.........the seller said it was compatible with Vista and W'7'; I put the stick into my USB port and it showed it had FAT 32 on it and, NOT knowing for sure, I figured that it probably should have NTFS system on it before I transfer things on to it. I told my W'7 to format it to NTFS and it came back that it could not be done.

Please tell me IF I can use this stick with FAT32 to store data off of my present W'7 OS - to be re-installed onto a NEW install of W'7 in the near future.....OR.....does this stick have to have NTFS on it????

THANKS michael

Leave it as default FAT32 is a fine file system. I would not change it unless you need to. There are not many reasons to change.

Plus FAT32 is good for updating your BIOS, and other stuff.

And welcome to the forums

I have no idea of why the seller would say that the drive wasn't compatible with Windows 7, I've never heard of such a thing. I have a 16GB Corsair Flash Voyager and an OCZ 16GB flash, and haven't had any problems with either compatibility wise.

If you read the post again you will see that the seller said it was compatible.

Sorry, that is what sometimes happen when I scan too fast.

The only reason I have ever permanently formatted a USB flash drive is for my Windows 7 install 4GB drive.

I didn't even need to do this. I followed the tutorial here but you can use FAT32 for this as well.

There are reasons I'm sure but I can't think of any besides that right now.

Hope this helped the OP.

The only reason you might have to format NTFS is if you need to store a single file over 4GB in size.

There's one I couldn't think of. haha

THANKS to ALL!!! Sounds like I'm GOOD to GO with this Flash Drive. NOW - to figure out the most important things to take off of this W'7 RC before I UPGRADE it.

You can't upgrade the RC. You said that you have the retail vesion, but I've found that term is used ubiquitiously to name many versions of the OS. If truely full retail, no problem. You simply do a clean install into an empty partion. If upgrade, it depends on whether you have Vista installed or not. If you have XP, then somewhat like the retail, you do a clean install also. I wouldn't uninstall the RC until I had the retail installed properly...plus you have until March 31 before it becomes inop.