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USB flash drives are this century's floppies, holding everything from personal and medical information to music and pictures and even secure data, with the added advantage of being small and rugged enough for keychain duty. You can even boot from flash drives, just like the old floppies, which, together with portability, universal compatibility, and enough space to host useful tools, makes them ideal recovery devices. Hewlett-Packard's USB Disk Storage Format Tool can quickly and thoroughly format virtually any USB flash drive in a wide range of file systems as well as create bootable USB media. We tested it in Windows 7.
This compact tool has an equally compact interface, an efficient little dialog with selections for Device and File system, and an entry field for Volume label, and check boxes for format options, including the ability to create a bootable DOS start-up disk using either internal system files or files at a location you can specify. Other than Start and Close buttons, that's it, not even a Help file, though this tool is easy enough to figure out without one. We moved the data off of an older 1GB flash drive and inserted the drive in an open USB port. HP USB immediately identified it and its file type, FAT. We chose to reformat it in NTFS and enable compression. We clicked Start, and a pop-up warned us all data on the drive would be lost. We allowed it to proceed, and it formatted the drive in seconds. Clicking Close called up a small dialog with detailed information about the drive. We then moved the data back to the newly reformatted drive, ejected it, reinserted it, and verified that everything was in order, including our portable apps.
HP's little tool is the USB flash drive tool that could, bringing enhanced power and capability to your Windows system at no cost. We recommend it to anyone who uses flash drives.
Publisher's Description
From Hewlett-Packard:
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool utility will format any USB flash drive, with your choice of FAT, FAT32, or NTFS partition types. You can also make the disk bootable by specifying a file location.
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All versions:
4.3 starsout of 32 votes
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Current version:
4.3 starsout of 32 votes
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My rating:
Write review
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"works a charm"
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
makes USB stick full capacity again, never had any errors with it
Cons
cant really think of one
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"Having a little problem..."
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
Easy to find.
Easy to use.
Speedy to convert.Cons
I just converted my Seagate 0130 USB storage device very simply to a FAT32, but instead of having a Terabyte of space (like it did originally), it only has 931 GB and it filled with 802 GB. The folder was empty when I converted it, and it looks empty when I open it now, but the properties say that it only has 128 GB free space. Any help?
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"worked great thanks"
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
easy to use
Cons
12345678777
Summary
12345678777
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"It does what it says it does."
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
It's a tool for reformatting USB drives and SD/Micro SD cards in a much more complete and thorough manner than the built-in Windows 7 formatting tool. It takes longer, but you will get a 100% perfect formatting job out of it. No adware, spyware, viruses or licensing gimmicks, either.
Cons
None whatsoever.
Summary
I grabbed this because I needed to reformat a Micro SD card for my Nook Color, but Windows wouldn't recognize the card at all. This tool reformatted the card, which made Windows recognize it, and I was able to load all of my e-books onto the Nook with no problem.
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"Excellent software"
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
thanks CNET for this software
Very easy install
pendrive can be formatted in vat or NTFSCons
i dont have any cons to tell
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"This thing works!"
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
Simple. Fast. Does the trick no one else has provided. This should be built-into Windows.
Cons
Don't have any.
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"It is brilliant"
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
Windows (XP) sometimes offers NTFS as a Formatting choice, but most times it does not.
This program does offer that choice, plus it is simple to use.
It has worked on SanDisk, etc.Cons
None that I have found
Summary
Simple to use, and very useful
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"Good Tool."
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
This tool is not specific to HP only. Also works on other brands.
Cons
Not working at all on Sandisk
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"This tool is effective, invaluable and excellent!"
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
Very user friendly, fast and most importantly, IT WORKS!!!!!
Cons
Absolutely NONE noted.
Summary
This tool should be a part of every computer user's arsenal. Thank you Hewlett Packard! And it's FREE!!!
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"Great utility"
Version: HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8
Pros
Restores USB sticks to full availablity
Cons
None that I noticed
Summary
I attempted top create a bootable USB on a 32 Gig stick. The boot image took up about 500meg but no other space was available. This utility allowed be to correct my mistake, and put the boot image on an old 1gig stick, and recapture my 32 for some other use.
