[TUTORIAL] How to Format your USB Drive Using Command Prompt in Windows

JARVIS

If your USB drive is not being recognized by Windows, or is not formatting properly, there may be problems with either Windows or the USB drive itself. In case of problem with USB Drive, you can "wipe" it by many ways.

This tutorial is about formatting your USB Drive or SD Card using command prompt in Windows. All the steps are tested successfully and this tutorial is self-made.

How to Format your USB Drive Using Command Prompt

1. First Off, connect your USB Drive. Then, open Command Prompt as Administrator either by using Run or in Start Menu.




2. Type "diskpart" and press Enter. You may be prompted for administrator access. The prompt will now change to DISKPART>.




3. Type "list disk" and press Enter. This will list all of your connected disks.



4. Then, Type "select disk #" and press Enter. Here '#' refers to the number associated to your drive. For Example, in the screenshot, I want to clean my 2 GB USB Drive so, I need to type "select disk 1".



5. Type "clean" and press Enter to wipe the drive. This may take time according to the size of your USB Drive.
*WARNING: Proceed at your own risk. Select the disk carefully as if you select the wrong drive, you may end up wiping your hard drive instead.



6. Type "create partition primary" and press Enter which will create a new partition on the disk.



7. Next, type in "active" and press Enter to make the newly-created partition the active partition on the USB drive.



8. Now, type "format fs=fat32" and press Enter. Instead of fat32, you can also put NTFS or exFAT. This will format the new partition using the FAT32 file system, which is compatible with most devices and computers. The format process will take time so you need to wait a while.



9. As in the screenshot, diskpart successfully formatted the volume so now the USB Drive will show up in Explorer.




10. Type "exit" and press Enter to close the DISKPART utility.

You are done and you have successfully wiped your USB Drive in Command Prompt using diskpart command.
*NOTE: If your USB drive will still not show up in Windows after using the DISKPART utility, or you receive errors when trying to format, your USB drive is most likely damaged and no longer functional.

somi

works like a charm thanks bro