format flash drive

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I have a flash drive that is kind of acting up on me. Is there a way to format it in OSX?
 
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Disk Utility (applications > Utilities > disk utility). Just select the mounted drive and click "Erase" tab. Then make sure it is MS DOS FAT for volume format and click erase.
 
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Actually, you can format it as Mac OS (Journaled) format. You will find that Mac OS X writes to it faster once you do, although if you plan to share it with Windows PCs, this may not work (unless they have MacDrive, or some similar software that lets Windows PCs read Mac OS X's file format).
 
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not working

My 4GB flash drive has been "erasing" for the past 9 hours. Any ideas for rectifying this issue?
 
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Yes scottie - another drive as they do fail alas and quite often depending on the brand. Best run at the moment seems to be with SanDisk.
 
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Flash Drive Issue

I'm using an 8 gig SanDisk flash drive to transfer files from my pc over to my macbook pro slowly, but every time I delete stuff off of my flash drive it shows that the free space is low, even though there's nothing in my flash drive.

Is there an explanation for this or a way that I can fix it?
 

chscag

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Are you sure there's nothing on the flash drive? There may be large hidden files on there that can't be deleted.

When you plug the flash drive into your PC, open up My Computer, Folder options, and make sure you're showing hidden and system files. Then check to see if there's anything on the drive.
 
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There are hidden files. Do I have to format it every time I want to free up space then?
 

chscag

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No, that's certainly not necessary. Just use the properties dialog from Windows and remove the hidden, system, and read only attributes from the files. Once those are removed you can delete them in the normal way.
 
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ah, okay. that makes sense.

it's just odd that there are always extra 'hidden files' whenever i plug into a mac.

thanks for you help!
 
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Empty Trash on zip-drive

I used to have that problem and now I always make sure I empty the trash after deleting anything from the zip-drive before ejecting it. It works for me, and it's really simple. I'm not sure if this is the problem for you though. It couldn't hurt to try though.
 

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