Vista will not read flash drives using FAT

[Ron]

When the drives are inserted, Vista will
request to format the drive. If FAT is selected for the formatting, the
formatting will fail. If NTSF is selected, the formatting will succeed and
the device can be used. However, the removable FAt drives work fine when
inserted into a computer running XP.

Any ideas?

 

[Bender]

"The usual factory recommendations for Windows users is to reformat ..."
Or use the "Convert" command so you don't have to recopy your data back onto
the drive.

 

[Leroy]

Open Computer Management.

In the Navigation pane of Computer Management (Local), under Storage,
click Disk Management.

Right-click the drive you want to format, and then click Format.

In the Format dialog box, under File System, select FAT32, click OK, and
then click OK again.

 

[Tim Slattery]

I've tried to use the following command:

format f: /FS:FAT32

but Vista still doesn't see the drive.

There's something I don't understand here. If you can't see the drive,
how do you know it's drive "F"?

The first thing you have to do with a new drive is to install one or
more partitions. "Drive letters" are assigned to partitions, not
physical drives. Partitioning used to be done by FDISK, now you use
"Disk Management" within Vista. Once you've partitioned your disk, the
partitions will get drive letters (maybe after a reboot) and you'll be
able to see them. Now you can format the partitions, then they'll be
ready for use.