Unplugged the external USB hard drive and Voila!, the laptop could see the Camera's SD memory chip as a logical drive and download pictures from it. A good source of information for matters relating to USB devices is www.usbman.com.
USB flash drive formatting problems
'When I tried to format my 4 GB SanDisk USB pen drive, I got the message saying the disk was write protected. Is there any USB format tool can remove the write protection?'
'I just bought an 8GB Kingston data traveler for backup. But I got the error message saying 'cannot format USB drive' when I tried to reformat the USB drive. What can I do?'
'I encountered the disk not formatted error on my 64GB Toshiba flash drive. Windows was unable to complete the format. Is there any way that I can use to format my USB flash drive for reuse successfully?'
'My SanDisk USB drive used to be originally 8GB when I bought it. But now the capacity only shows 250MB. How do I fix my USB drive to restore its original 8GB size back?'
What is the best USB flash drive formatting tool
USB cannot format, USB drive is write protected, USB format error, USB becomes raw, and more are the common issues you might encounter when you use a USB flash drive. At this moment, you have to format your USB flash drive to fix the problem. And it's likely that you can not do it with the Windows built-in disk management tool. That's when you need to find a third-party USB formatting tool for help. Which one is the best?
In fact, there are many formatting tools for USB flash drive like HP USB Disk Storage Formatting Tool, MMC Formatting tool, Panasonic SD Formatting Tool, Urescue Formatting Tool, SD formatting software, etc. But here we would like to recommend you EaseUS partition software for its powerful formatting capacity and easy-to-use features. It allows to format a USB flash drive from Sandisk, Kingston, Panasonic, Lexar, Samsung, Sony, etc easily in all complex cases, for example, to format write-protected USB flash drive, format USB drive back to the original size, format USB drive to FAT32 or NTFS, and more. Now you can try the following guide to format your USB drive in simple steps. (Formatting will delete all data on the USB flash drive, back up all your files before starting the process.)
How to format your USB flash drive with EaseUS USB formatting tool:
Step 1: Select the USB drive to format.
Connect the USB drive or pen drive to your computer. Download and launch EaseUS partition software. Right-click the USB drive you intend to format and choose 'Format'.
Step 2: Set the drive letter and file system.
Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click 'OK'.
Step 3: Check the warning box.
Click 'OK' if you see the Warning window. If you have important data on it, back up the data in advance.
Step 4: Apply the changes.
Click the 'Execute operation' button first, and then click 'Apply' to format the USB drive.
In the technology world, we have a history of cannibalisms where one technology eats another. While the statement sounds negative, in the context of ease and improvements, it is effective. Here, I am talking about the optical discs (CD/DVD ROMs).
For almost over two decades, the format has been a de facto standard for storing our digital content, including movies, games, and software. However, it is dying now especially on PCs. Gone are the days when we used to show off those shiny DVD-Rs of Operating Systems and other Office productivity tools. Nowadays, you rarely see new PCs come with an optical drive, thanks to USB storage devices. And why not! compared to optical discs, USB storage devices are faster, more convenient, safer and lesser prone to damage.
In this modern era, almost all desktop operating system installers are flash drive ready, including various Linux distributions, Windows 7 and later, and macOS.
In this article, I will cover all the possible ways to create a bootable Windows 10 USB flash drive for both BIOS/MBR and UEFI/GPT-based computers.
Disclaimer: No USB storage devices were harmed in the writing of this blogpost. 🙂
To get started, make sure you have:
- A computer running Windows 7 or later with an internet connection
- A blank USB flash drive (at least 8 GB)
Using Microsoft’s Windows 10 Media Creation Tool – For Beginners
- Plug a USB flash drive into your computer’s USB port.
- Download Microsoft’s Windows 10 Media Creation Tool and Run it. The current logged in user account must be an administrator to run this tool.
- Read the license terms and click Accept if you agree with.
- On the What do you want to do? page, select Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) for another PC and then click Next.
- On the Select language, architecture, and edition page, uncheck Use the recommended options for this PC to enable greyed out options, which give a plethora of choices to select language, edition, and architecture of Windows 10. Choose them accordingly and click Next.
- On the next page, choose USB flash drive to create bootable installation USB media and click Next. You can also choose ISO file and save a Windows 10 Disc Image that can be used to create bootable pen drive or DVD later.
- Now select your attached USB drive from the drives list and click Next to start downloading Windows 10 Setup files. Once the downloading is finished – that solely depends on your internet connection speed – the tool will start formatting the removable drive automatically and create a bootable Windows 10 USB stick.
Using Disk Management tool – For Intermediates
- Attach a blank USB flash drive to your PC.
- Open Disk Management tool, (In the search box on the taskbar or Run dialog box, type
diskmgmt.msc
and press Enter to launch it). - On Disk Management window, right click on the plugged pen drive and choose Format….
- Click Yes when prompted to confirm and then the Format window pops Choose FAT32 file system (and keep rest of the options as they are) and click OK to format it.I recommend formatting the USB flash drive as FAT32 rather than as NTFS because FAT32 file system supports both BIOS and UEFI.
- Once it’s done, make sure the partition is marked as active. If it’s not, right click on the partition again and select Mark Partition as Active.
- Now download Windows 10 Disk Image (ISO file) and then extract or copy all setup files to the USB flash drive.
Using DISKPART – For Experts
- Insert a USB flash drive into the computer.
- Open Windows PowerShell or Command Prompt as Administrator and run:
diskpart
- First, determine the USB flash drive number, so type
list disk
on the DISKPART prompt, and then press Enter. The command displays a list of disks on the computer. Note the disk number of the targeted USB flash drive. Warning: Be certain about the disk number because all data of the selected disk will be destroyed. - At the DISKPART prompt, type
select disk <x>
, where x is the disk number and press Enter. - After selecting the disk, type
clean
, and press Enter to remove all partitions from the USB flash drive. - To create a new primary partition on the USB flash drive, type
create partition primary
orcreate part pri
, and then press Enter. - Type
select part 1
and press Enter to select the partition that you just created, and then typeformat fs=fat32 quick
to perform quick formatting the partition in FAT32 file system. - Type
active
to mark the partition as active and press Enter, followed byexit
command to return to the previous prompt. - Now download Windows 10 Disk Image (ISO file) and then extract or copy all files to the root of the USB flash drive. If you already have Windows 10 installation files, you can copy them using the following command:
xcopy C:Users/Ramesh/Downloads/W10 E: /s
and your bootable Windows 10 USB stick is ready to roll.
Have you got any questions you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know in the comments.