4 Best Ways to Fix 'The Format Did Not Complete Successfully' Error
Why Does The Format Fail to Complete Successfully?
Case 1 - "External hard drive is in RAW format, I tried to format it into NTFS but get the error 'the format did not complete successfully'. How to deal with the problem?"
Case 2 - "I receive the message 'The format did not complete successfully' when trying to format my pen drive by right-clicking format in Windows Explorer."
Case 3 - "I am seeing an error message that tells virtual disk manager the format did not complete successfully."
Case 4 - "I recently flashed a version of Linux on my USB, used it and worked out fine. But when I went to format it to use it as a normal drive again, Windows said that the volume was created successfully but it was not formatted."
You may wonder why Disk Management or Windows Explorer fails to format the removable disk, usually SD card, USB stick, and external hard drive. In general, from what we observed, there are several factors that can lead to not completing disk formatting. For example:
- Virus infection
- Unknown file system corruption
- Bad sectors
- Outdated BIOS or Windows Service Pack...
All Solutions to Fix 'The Format Did Not Complete Successfully' on SD Card/USB Drive
Despite an old topic for a long time, 'the format did not complete successfully' error is still a headache for many average users. Usually, such an error message means Windows was unable to complete the format for a hard disk or a removable storage media in a normal way, so you'd better stop trying.
To ease your worry, we find the six best ways to help fix the problem on USB, SD memory card, the external hard drive in Windows 10,8,7.
Solution 1. Remove Virus and Reformat
In most cases, including the format did not complete successfully issue, many USB malfunctions result from some unknown virus infection. So, it should be helpful to clear the virus for good to make the portable drive work again. Virus removable should be easy and quick if you have an anti-virus program installed. If you're confident with your computer skills, you can also attempt to remove the virus using CMD from any drive. After that, you can continue formatting the USB drive again in Windows.
Solution 2. Format This Drive with Command Prompt
If the format did not complete successfully in the Disk Management issue appears again after removing the virus and bad sectors, you can try formatting your USB drive or other devices by Command Prompt.
Step 1. Type cmd in the Search and open a DOS prompt.
Step 2. Type command: attrib -r -h -s ./s x:\*.* (replace x with your removable drive's drive letter, such as g or f)
Step 3. Type command: FORMAT X: /FS:FAT32 /Q /V:PenDrive (replace x with your pen drive's drive letter, such as g or f). This will reformat the pen drive into the FAT32 file system.
Solution 3. Format with Third-party USB & SD Format Tool
Qiling Partition Master Free is the best USB format tool as well as the best SD Card formatter that helps resolve Windows format error. You may as well use this method as the first because it's the simplest comparing with the former CMD methods. Above all, you can hardly make a mistake with it.
Step 1. Launch Qiling Partition Master, select the partition on your external hard drive/USB/SD card which you want to format and click the "Format" option.
Step 2. Assign a new partition label, file system (NTFS/FAT32/EXT2/EXT3), and cluster size to the selected partition, then click "Proceed".
Conclusion
Hope at least one of the three troubleshooting methods helps fix 'the format did not complete successfully' error on USB, SD memory card, the external hard drive in Windows 10,8,7. If none of the assistive disk formatting tools help format the removable disk successfully, do not give up. It's not the end of the day. There are still the other two viable solutions to fix 'The format did not complete successfully' or 'The volume was created successfully but it was not formatted' in Windows 10/8/7.
You can effortlessly try the following two solutions in Qiling Partition Master.
- Recreate partition
- Wipe the entire disk
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