How long does it take to format a 16gb flash drive with quick format

[Guest]

its been 2 hours and its still going. I formatted it with NTFS if that helps to answer my question

 

[sminlal]

With "Quick Format" it should take under a minute. Are you sure you're not doing a full format?

 

[saint19]

Hi newcomer and welcome to the Tom's hardware forum.

I'm 97% sure that the format that you are using with the 16gb flash drive isn't quick format.

The quick format for your 16gb flash drive must take 20 seconds or less.

What process do you use to format the flash drive?, how i see, 2 hours is for a low-level format.

 

[Guest]

Thanks - I think that's what it was and now it's formatted fine. Thanks for the help!

 

[saint19]

Any time, that's what we're here for.

 

[dayinthepark]

This issue is entitled to a bit more discussion. I needed RAID to text ESX (modified Linux, don't be snowed by the acronym) for virtual server testing. I could not afford SCSI or expensive NAS, so I downloaded FreeNAS to my flash drive (a 64GB Kingston USB flash). That software put four partitions on my flash drive and basically made it totally unusable for anything but functioning as an inexpensive RAID device. My manager yanked me off of virtual server testing and onto other stuff, so I wanted to get my 64GB flash drive back. With those RAID partitions on it, NOTHING could recover it. My Apple Mac Air could not "erase" it (their way of saying format). I put it into several windows systems, and the windows format utility always failed. I tried both quick and the full low-level reformat. all failed. I did some googling, and discovered a low-level system called "diskpart" that runs very low-level formatting commands on any drive, including a USB Flash. I started running it last night; it's been running nearly 20 hours, and shows "45 percent completed" at present. It will tack on a percent about every thirty minutes. Did someone say "slow"? The flash drive isn't warm, like a regular low-level format normally makes a drive. And it's just taking forever. I could throw it in the trash and pop for another $100 64GB flash drive, but I sure would like to understand why formatting a flash drive is such a drag. Perhaps the USB interface slows it all down? Perhaps the media in a USB flash is unlike NAND flash used in SSDs? Something isn't right. Knowledge gap here.