#How to force format external hard drive win 10 how to#
#How to force format external hard drive win 10 windows 10#
#How to force format external hard drive win 10 windows#

#How to force format external hard drive win 10 windows#

You can use fs=NTFS instead to format the drive as NTFS which will then only work on a Windows PC. The above command will format the USB drive in the FAT32 format which is ideal for USB drives.

Next, you should assign a file system to the drive.The above command will create a primary partition but you can also swap it for a logical partition if you prefer although that is not recommended. This deletes the entire partition though so you will need to create a new one and you can do this with the following command.Now to erase it all you have to do is type this command, That command only selects the drive, as you probably guessed.Here, X is the number of the drive you want to format. When you’ve identified the USB drive, note its disk number and then run this command.Comparing the list of drives before and after disconnecting the drive you can easily identify it. If you’re still not sure, disconnect the USB drive and run the list disk command again. You can see the sizes of each of the listed drives to help make your decision.

Your internal drives are also listed here and you wouldn’t want to format those. Identify the USB drive that you want to format and make sure it is the correct drive. When you press Enter, the DiskPart tool will list all the drives connected to your PC.

After this, retrieve a list of all connected drives using the command given below.

In the command prompt, run the Diskpart tool by entering this command:.

Click Yes on the User Account Control screen. Select Command Prompt (Admin) from the quick menu. Alternatively, you can right-click on the Start button or press Win+ X on the keyboard.

#How to force format external hard drive win 10 windows 10#

To do this, search cmd in the Windows 10 search box, right-click on the Command prompt search result and select Run as administrator.

Run the Command prompt as administrator.

You may like: Relocate Installed Apps and Games in Windows 10 Format USB Drive on Windows 10 using Command prompt In some cases, using the command line can help but it may not necessarily help in every situation. Furthermore, a formatting error can occur due to a number of reasons. If you have any important data saved to the drive make sure you copy or move it to a safe place. Note: Formatting a USB Drive will erase all data on it.

Just follow the instructions given below and by the end of it, you’ll realize it too. However it may seem, using the command line is pretty simple and in some cases simpler than using the GUI. Using the command line seems like a job only programmers and computer wizards would do. You don’t know what to type, and even when you do know you can’t make sense of it. Most Windows users will probably shy away from the command line because it seems like a daunting task. So if you’re facing any such errors while trying to format USB drive on Windows 10 you can try the command prompt. Usually, when a GUI method fails, there’s a command line method to do the same thing which probably won’t fail. In most cases, the error message you’re shown is Windows was unable to complete the format. Sometimes though, this method can return an error. You get to select a new file system for the drive before you click the Start button and that’s it. It’s fairly straightforward and all you have to do is right-click on it and select Format.

#How to force format external hard drive win 10 how to#

If you’ve been a Windows user for even a small amount of time, you’d know how to format USB Drive on Windows.