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Note: the following steps are done on a Windows computer. The objective is to permanently wipe the old data and gift yourself with a new USB drive. Sometimes there are partition errors which can suck up the storage space.įollow the detailed steps in this guide to fix an unformattable and unusable USB drive. There are many reasons why you may experience these errors. I hope this article was helpful to you.If any of this sounds familiar, you should know it may not be entirely the USB drive’s fault. I won’t go into detail about this as this article isn’t meant to help you render a USB stick into a faulty state, but rather to help you fix your USB flash drive. Win32 Disk Imager is as good an image burning utility as any other, it’s just the combination of trying to write the wrong image to a physical USB device that got me into trouble. Mind you, this is not to say that Win32 Disk Imager is bad or that it will cause you problems. Every time I tried to write the Chromium operating system to my flash drive with Win32 Disk Imager, my USB flash drive got corrupted.
#How to format usb drive software
If you are wondering how I managed to “brake” or “corrupt” another USB flash disk, I can tell you that I managed to replicate the problem by trying to write the same Chromium operating system image to another USB flash disk with the same imagewriting software that I used when things went wrong with my Lexar drive. Yes, I did the test with another USB flash drive and was also able to bring it back to a working state.
#How to format usb drive how to
If you are wondering how to format USB drives from another brand (not Lexar), I can confirm that it works with other brands as well. So, after a lot of searching I finally found this Lexar USB format tool with which I was able to solve the "cannot format usb drive" error and I hope I can save you the time by writing my experiences down here. How To Format a USB Drive From Another Brand
![how to format usb drive how to format usb drive](https://www.howtoisolve.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/3-Erase-USB-Drive.jpg)
I tried several times with different USB devices and in come cases, I still had to use the "normal" Windows format command in order to bring the USB flash drive back to a usable state. You can deselect that option by checking the check box next to "Do not load system files". You may have noticed in the screenshots above that the Lexar USB flash drive format tool can actually be used to format a USB flash drive as a bootable device. I downloaded it, installed it as administrator and ran the tool with high hopes (as administrator), even though the downloaded executable comes with a strange, smiley-like icon that doesn’t really inspire confidence, to say the least.Īfter that, my USB stick was ready to use again, no more "cannot format usb drive messages". When I started entering "cannot format usb drive" search phrases with the USB flash drive model in it, I found a little Lexar tool that was described to be a solution when you have a faulty USB thumb drive. Ultimately I came across this solution as I started searching for problems with USB flash sticks with the particular brand and model that I was using, a Lexar Media JD FireFly (Lexar JumpDrive FireFly) with 8 GB capacity. Ok, it’s not *my* solution as I didn’t invent it, but it is what worked for me. The Cannot Format USB Drive Message And My Solution Today, however, all is well and I have my 8 GB USB flash drive back in operational mode. I guess some computer problems are tougher to solve than others and I spent more time on this one than is good for a person’s mental peace.
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At that point I decided that, when I would finally find a solution and get my USB stick working again, I would write the solution in an article and publish it online, so others can maybe avoid the frustration and don’t have to waste as much time as I did when their Windows throws the “Cannot format USB drive” message. So, I figured if I needed the best part of the afternoon to find success, there had to be other poor souls who were struggling to see results as well. The "cannot format usb drive" message seems to bother a lot of people. I’ve seen people suggesting to use the command-line “sfc /scannow” system file checker, I’ve read long, elaborated forum threads about raw filesystems on USB flash drives, and I’ve witnessed people being instructed to use the command line utility 'diskpart' to wipe and clean their USB drive. I can’t tell how many internet forum posts I’ve combed through, reading stories of individuals with similar problems where fellow forum members were trying to help out and offer good advice. Another symptom was that in the Windows Disk Management tool, the drive partition would come up with a filesystem “RAW”. All I got after clicking the format button was a Windows error informing me that “Windows was unable to complete the format”.