What properties won’t Windows copy?

I’ve got a question that has intrigued me for quite a while. If I copy an EXE file (with a .exe file extension) from my PC to a USB memory stick, a message pops up to ask if I want to continue to copy, because all of its properties can’t be copied – whatever that means. I’ve gone ahead many times and found the file runs perfectly when transferred to another PC. So, my question is: why is this question asked? It’s also asked when coping Excel files, but again they seem to work fine elsewhere. Keep up the great magazine. Keith Holman

TechLife responds: This is more common than you might imagine. It happens because many USB sticks are supplied pre-formatted using an older file system known as FAT32 – while Windows 10/11 run on a newer file system called

NTFS. This is done because the FAT32 standard affords compatibility with the broadest possible number of devices, including with computers that aren’t running Windows. So, it’s both logical and sensible to use FAT32 for USB sticks that by nature tend to be passed between computers. But it does lead to a few quirks, of which this is one.

The ‘properties’ in question relate to what’s known as metadata. This is extra information that’s attached to a file, typically for description purposes, and isn’t itself essential for a file to run or for the file’s content to be accessible. The metadata will be specific to the file or files you’re trying to copy. With an EXE file, for example, it might relate to a description of the program. So, copying that file from NTFS to EXE might lose that bit of metadata, but the EXE file itself will be wholly unaffected – meaning it’ll run just as well from a FAT32 USB stick as it would an NTFS drive.

You can view a file’s metadata by right-clicking it and choosing Properties (see screenshot 1 ), before clicking the Details tab (see screenshot 2 ). If you do this before and after copying a file, you’ll probably notice what bits of metadata are missing.

Whether you consider them to matter is up to you, but for an EXE file it’s unlikely: as noted, it’s just descriptive information that’s normally hidden.

So, you can continue ignoring this message, clicking Yes to proceed. However, it’s also easy to convert a USB stick to NTFS, if you don’t mind risking incompatibility with nonWindows systems and devices. It’s pretty easy, but do back up before doing so.

First, click Start, type cmd and then click Command Prompt. In the Command Prompt window that appears, type convert x: / fs:ntfs, being sure to replace the x: part with your USB stick’s actual drive letter (see screenshot

3 ). Check your typing because this command will execute the moment you press Enter, without asking you to confirm. We’ve published it on our Pastebin page, at www.snipca.com/40976, so you can copy it from there.

The conversion will take a few minutes, but there’s nothing else for you to do, other than wait.