How to Format a Bootable USB Drive in Windows 10
"Hi, I'm thinking about formatting a bootable USB drive in Windows 10, but it's so weird that the USB drive is now showing several MBs capacity. It should be a 4GB size in total. What should I do to format the bootable USB drive properly and restore its full capacity?"
Solution 1. How to Format Bootable Pendrive in Windows 10 via Disk Management
Solution 2. Format bootable USB drive by using Diskpart command
Solution 3. Format bootable USB drive with Qiling Partition Master
Solution 1. How to Format Bootable Pendrive in Windows 10 via Disk Management
On Windows, you can utilize two bootable USB drive format utilities: Disk Management and Command Prompt. There introduces Disk Management to solve how to format a bootable USB in Windows 10.
First, when you run Windows PC, connect your bootable USB drive to it. Second, press "Windows + R" to open disk management on the pop-up window. Third, right-click the bootable drive and choose "Format".
Solution 2. Format bootable USB drive by using Diskpart command
It's also practical to use the diskpart command to format your USB drive. If you are quite familiar with the use or command prompt, this method is also a good choice for you.
Step 1: Press "Windows key + R" simultaneously, type cmd in the search box and open "Command Prompt".
Step 2: Type diskpart. Run the Pop-up window that appears.
Step 3: Type list disk.
Step 4: Type select disk 0 (or disk 1... the number is the drive of the bootable USB that is going to be formatted).
Step 5: type clean.
Step 6: Type create partition primary.
Step 7: Go to "My Computer" or "This PC" (Windows 10), right-click on the bootable USB drive and select the "Format" option to format it.
The two methods given above will help to format a bootable USB drive successfully and restore it to original condition.
Solution 3. Format bootable USB drive with Qiling Partition Master
Qiling Partition Master is a disk/partition management software tool that allows users to fully manage their hard drive storage. This free partition manager is selected as the most powerful yet free USB formatting tool that helps to format a bootable USB drive, memory card, pen drive, and other hard disk storage devices easily and quickly without losing the original size.
Download and install Qiling Partition Master on your Windows computer and follow the steps below to perform the storage device formatting with ease.
Step 1. Open Qiling Partition Master. Connect the your USB drive to PC.
Step 2. Select the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format, click on it and select "Format" in the "Disk management" page.
Step 3. In the next window, enter the Partition label, choose the NTFS file system, and set the cluster size according to your needs, then click "Proceed".
Qiling Partition Master can help you format an external hard drive/USB/SD card to NTFS or other file systems effectively and quickly. On top of that, it's a versatile disk management tool that comes with many other useful features for you to explore, such as resize/move a partition, merge partitions, convert between GPT and MBR, migrate OS, copy partition, etc. All in all, it's worth downloading on your computer to regularly manage and optimize your computer hard drive performance.
More Information: How to Make a Bootable USB Drive
Speaking of making a bootable drive, some of you focus on two targets to finish the making process. One is for resizing partition, and the other helps you bring the Windows system back to a healthy environment when it corrupted or failed to boot. The below guide suits to resize partitions with Qiling Partition Master. If you want to deploy the Windows system, check to create boot disks on another guide.
Step 1. To create a bootable disk of Qiling Partition Master, you should prepare a storage media, like a USB drive, flash drive or a CD/DVD disc. Then, correctly connect the drive to your computer.
Step 2. Launch Qiling Partition Master, find the "Create bootable media" feature and click on it.
Step 3. You can choose the USB or CD/DVD when the drive is available. However, if you do not have a storage device at hand, you can also save the ISO file to a local drive, and later burn it to a storage media. Once made the option, click the "Proceed" button to begin.
When the process finishes, you have successfully created an Qiling Partition Master WinPE bootable disk. Now, you can manage your hard disks and partitions through the bootable drive whenever the computer fails to boot normally.
If you have RAID drives, load the RAID driver first by clicking Add Driver from the menu bar, which can help you add the driver of your device under WinPE environment, as some specific device cannot be recognized under WinPE environment without drivers installed, such as RAID or some specific hard disk.
To Sum Up
Regarding the topic "how to format USB Drive to NTFS", we come up with three free & effective ways for you. Each USB Drive formatting method does well in NTFS format without noticeable limits. One difference is that the native Windows programs will format your USB Drive by erasing data on it, while the third-party Qiling Partition Master can convert the USB Drive from one file system to NTFS without affecting data.
As a matter of fact, chances are that Windows Explorer and Disk Management can hardly format USB Drive to FAT32 as it did to NTFS, particularly when the hard disk capacity exceeds 32GB. This is a long-term defect, and that's why you'll have to apply Qiling Partition Master to format a 64GB SD card to FAT32.
Related Articles
- How to Resize EFI System Partition on Windows 11/10/8/7
- Diskpart Has Encountered an Error Access Is Denied | How to Fix
- [Fixed] Windows Cannot be Installed to This Disk. The Selected Disk is of the GPT Partition Style
- How to Create Bootable Usb Windows 10
- How Do I Install a Second Hard Drive? Here Is the Complete Guide
- Qiling Partition Master 6.0 Crack 2022 | Get Qiling Partition Master Crack License Key