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I have an USB stick totalling 8GB. It has three "partitions":

enter image description here

  • 41 MB Unallocated
  • D: 2MB Fat
  • the rest is unallocated

I want to completly format the USB drive. Yet when I do right click on D:\ and select format it will only format the 2.25MB partition:

enter image description here

I cannot delete the D:\ partition within Disk Management tool ("Create and format hard disk partitions"). When I right click it, all options are grayed out.

enter image description here

I tried ejecting the disk, but then it also disappears from the disk management tool.

(I assumed unmounting the D:\ drive would let me delete the partitions, yet as it appears: ejecting is not unmounting.)

How to format the entire USB stick using the Windows Disk Management tool?

k0pernikus
  • 2,652

2 Answers2

17

It turns out that Windows protects EFI partition from being deleted. One is able to delete the partion via

  • diskpart (Win + R, enter the command, a terminal windows with diskpart running will pop up)
  • list disk, will print a list of all disks, e.g.:
DISKPART> list disk

Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt




Disk 0    Online         3726 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 1    Online          931 GB  1024 KB        *
  Disk 2    Online          238 GB   450 MB
  Disk 3    Online          476 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 5    Online           57 GB    57 GB
  • Select your relevant disk. In my case, it's Disk 5: sel disk 5. (Double-check your disk number! You can run detail disk after selecting the disk to see more detail about the disk, such as its name, if you're unsure that you've selected the right disk.)
  • list partition
DISKPART> list partition

Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset




Partition 1    System            3968 KB  1988 MB


DISKPART> sel partition 1

And finally, deleted the partion via:

DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

From the source, they also set an ID, yet that part both did not work nor was it necessary for me.

Now the entire USB stick was deleted:

enter image description here

Mark Amery
  • 313
k0pernikus
  • 2,652
1

I have a CDFS volume on my USB stick that I'm unable to delete. I tried @k0pernikus's answer, but the CDFS volume doesn't show up in DiskPart, so I was only able to select the other disk on the USB stick and delete its two partitions.This didn't fully work for me because afterwards my USB was unusable. I wasn't able to format it or use it.

So I had to go back to DiskPart and:

  1. Select the disk again,
  2. Type create partition primary (to create a new partition), and then
  3. Type format fs=ntfs quick (to format the disk to NTFS)

This worked for me to get the disk usable again, and for some reason the "create primary partition" step didn't actually partition my harddrive again (although maybe it separated it from the CDFS drive?).

Note: I got help from this video.

rebecca73
  • 11