PEN DRIVE OR USB DRIVE ISSUES

  1. Open File Explorer.

  2. Click on This PC from the left pane.

  3. Under the "Devices and drives" section, right-click the flash drive and select the Format option.

  4. Source: Windows Central

  5. Use the "File system" drop-down menu and select the NTFS option.
    Quick tip: If you plan to use the removable storage on Windows 10 as well as on macOS systems, you may want to select the exFAT option for compatibility. However, if you think about using the device on a Linux machine, FAT32 is the best option, even though you will be limited to 4GB file sizes.

  6. In the "Allocation unit size" drop-down menu, use the default selection.

  7. In the "Volume label" field, confirm a drive name that will appear in File Explorer. For example, workFlash.

  8. Under the "Format options" section, select the Quick format option.

  9. Source: Windows Central

  10. Quick note: The "Quick format" option only deletes the file system table and the root folder, but the data may still be recoverable. If you do not check the option, a full format operation will be performed, and it will do a scan for bad sectors and writes zeros in all sectors deleting the data. As a result, this process can take a long time, depending on the size of the drive.

  11. Click the Start button.

  12. Click the Yes button.

Once you complete the steps, the flash drive will be ready to store documents, pictures, videos, and other files on the removable drive.

How to format USB flash drive with Disk Management

The Disk Management tool offers at least two routes to format a USB flash drive. You can format the storage to rebuild the file system table and erase the content, or you can delete the partition that comes in handy to fix storage problems.

Format flash drive

To use Disk Management to format a USB drive, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.

  2. Search for Create and format hard disk partitions and click the top result to open the Disk Management tool.

  3. Right-click the removable drive and select the Format option.

  4. Source: Windows Central

  5. In the "Volume label" field, confirm a name to identify the storage in File Explorer.

  6. Use the "File system" drop-down menu and select the NTFS option. (You can also select the "FAT32" or "exFAT" option.)

  7. In the "Allocation unit size" drop-down menu, use the Default option.

  8. Check the Perform a quick format option.

  9. Source: Windows Central

  10. (Optional) Check the Enable file and folder compression option.

  11. Click the OK button.

After you complete the steps, the drive will be erased and reformatted to store data again.

Clean and format flash drive

If you are dealing with errors or other problems, you can clean the USB drive and start again from scratch with a new partition and file system with Disk Management.

To clean and format a USB flash drive, use these steps:

  1. Open Start.

  2. Search for Create and format hard disk partitions and click the top result to open the Disk Management tool.

  3. Right-click the removable storage and select the Delete volume option.