6
When I double click on My Computer
, I can immediately see the Total size
and Free space
for internal and external HDDs, and inserted CD/DVD media, but in the same columns I cannot see these values for any USB flash drives. They are just empty. To see, I have to right click on USB drive letter, and select Properties
.
Is there a trick to make Windows XP display USB drive's Total size
and Free space
in My Computer
window?
Is it in FAT32? – r0ca – 2010-03-03T13:47:09.313
Yes, Flash Drive is FAT32 whereas HDD is NTFS. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar – 2010-03-03T13:49:49.263
I'M pretty sure that if you format it in NTFS, you will see the information of that USB drive. Can you try it out? – r0ca – 2010-03-03T13:50:33.710
I have to use it in FAT32 because I use it for my XBOX360 and LCD TV. I wanted to try your recommendation as well but I cannot format it as NTFS. When I right click and select Format, the only File System I can select for it is FAT32. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar – 2010-03-03T13:54:43.903
It's weird. I have Windows 7 as you have and I am able to format my 4go and 16go in NTFS. In that case, I'm 99% sure that have it format in NTFS would fix the issue. But if you can't afford due to Xbox, I understand ;) – r0ca – 2010-03-03T13:57:29.157
1@Mehper: I suppose it's the behavior of XP not to show free space and total size on Removable Disk. Maybe because at the time XP was released, removable drives were slow and it would take a lot of time to parse them to calculate the used space. Even more on FAT where this info is not stored in the metadata but has to be calculated each time. I think it's stored in the metadata for NTFS. And the speed of removable devices has improved too. – Snark – 2010-03-03T14:21:08.073
:) Yes, my constraint is Xbox, I am dependent to FAT32. By the way, I tried a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4 GB, and a Kingston 1 GB. They can't be formatted as NTFS neither.
I am starting to believe that WinXP cannot display FAT32 drives' total size and free space in My Computer view. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar – 2010-03-03T14:25:54.760
@Snark: This seems reasonable. You may think of pasting this as an answer as you determine the behavior of XP against FAT32 drives. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar – 2010-03-03T14:30:45.407
@Mehper: I didn't find yet literature to back my suppositions... – Snark – 2010-03-03T14:33:40.813
Me neither tho... – r0ca – 2010-03-03T14:49:53.120
1FYI, even when formatted as NTFS, XP still does not show the size and free space (nor does Windows 7). Also, in order to format a USB drive as NTFS, it has to set have its hardware setting at "Optimize for performance". To do this, Right-click on the drive and select Properties. Click on the Hardware tab. Find your USB drive in the list, click on it, then click the Properties button. On the Policies tab, select the "Optimize for performance" option. Click OK. Wait a few seconds for the drive to remount. Now you will be able to format the drive as NTFS or FAT32. – raven – 2010-03-03T16:57:47.933
I'm curious to know what language that's in. – Moshe – 2011-04-17T17:46:27.477
@Moshe: It's in Turkish. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar – 2011-04-17T18:26:03.080