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What to format a USB flash drive to?

A

ashjamben

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2007
608
1
Shanghai, China
I have a USB flash drive i use regularly between my mac and PC's at college. I bought this flash drive well before i got my mac, anyway.

i find it kinda annoying that when i delete something off it from my mac it dissappears, but doesn't seem to free up any space on the drive. when i then put it into my pc at home, with the 'view hidden files and folders' turned on i can see a folder named 'trashes' that seems to have all the stuff i've deleted. so its not actually getting rid of anything.

when i delete things with a PC it gets rid of it completely.

i'm guessing it's something to do with the format of the drive. its currently FAT16 (MS-DOS). i know how to re format the drive with disk utility, but don't know what format to use. any help? i wanna be able to delete things using both a PC and my mac.

thanks for reading
 
It's nothing to do with the format. It's just a difference between the way Mac OS and Windows trash systems work. Windows doesn't support trash/recycling files on flash sticks, OSX does.
 
ashjamben said:
I have a USB flash drive i use regularly between my mac and PC's at college. I bought this flash drive well before i got my mac, anyway.

i find it kinda annoying that when i delete something off it from my mac it dissappears, but doesn't seem to free up any space on the drive. when i then put it into my pc at home, with the 'view hidden files and folders' turned on i can see a folder named 'trashes' that seems to have all the stuff i've deleted. so its not actually getting rid of anything.

when i delete things with a PC it gets rid of it completely.

i'm guessing it's something to do with the format of the drive. its currently FAT16 (MS-DOS). i know how to re format the drive with disk utility, but don't know what format to use. any help? i wanna be able to delete things using both a PC and my mac.

thanks for reading
Click to expand...

On the mac, when you delete files from the flash drive, how are you doing it?

If you are dragging items to the trash and not emptying the trash, you are not deleting the files thus you are not freeing up space on it.
 
ashjamben said:
I have a USB flash drive i use regularly between my mac and PC's at college. I bought this flash drive well before i got my mac, anyway.

i find it kinda annoying that when i delete something off it from my mac it dissappears, but doesn't seem to free up any space on the drive. when i then put it into my pc at home, with the 'view hidden files and folders' turned on i can see a folder named 'trashes' that seems to have all the stuff i've deleted. so its not actually getting rid of anything.

when i delete things with a PC it gets rid of it completely.

i'm guessing it's something to do with the format of the drive. its currently FAT16 (MS-DOS). i know how to re format the drive with disk utility, but don't know what format to use. any help? i wanna be able to delete things using both a PC and my mac.

thanks for reading
Click to expand...


This issue here is that you may not be aware of the functionality of the "Trash" and "Recycle Bin" on OS X and Windows, respectively. They are temporary folders that you can put things into when you think you might want to delete them. It doesn't remove the file from the hard drive, just moves it to (essentially) a folder that happens to be called "Trash" or "Recycle Bin". On Windows, however, this functionality is not supported for flash drives. Moving a file to the Recycle Bin actually deletes it from the flash drive, while on OS X, moving a file to the Trash doesn't actually remove the file from the flash drive. When you need to do is either empty the Trash or delete the file permanently by pressing the Apple key (i.e., Command key) and "delete".

As for formating, you want to format the flash drive as MS-DOS (FAT). That is the cross-platform standard for flash drives.
 
Annoying isn't it? If you want to clear off space on your flash drive in Mac OSX, you also have to delete everything else in your trash. I say it's a design flaw, but I suppose the counter-argument goes if you put a file in the trash you don't want it anyway. And the counter-counter-argument is that the whole purpose of a trash can is to store stuff in case you accidentally delete something... :rolleyes:

In summary... clear the flash drive space on the PC, not the Mac.
 
thanks for the replies.

i understand it now, but its still slightly annoying. i'll try the command+delete thing, but i normally delete stuff like that anyway. plus, if it wasn't for the fact i turn on 'view hidden files and folders' on on my pc then those files would never get deleted.... unless when i plug it back into my mac and it sees the trash is empty, it deletes them from the flash drive?
 
ashjamben said:
thanks for the replies.

i understand it now, but its still slightly annoying. i'll try the command+delete thing, but i normally delete stuff like that anyway. plus, if it wasn't for the fact i turn on 'view hidden files and folders' on on my pc then those files would never get deleted.... unless when i plug it back into my mac and it sees the trash is empty, it deletes them from the flash drive?
Click to expand...
No... this would only happen if you deleted the .Trashes folder from within Windows. Are you doing this?
 
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