Right-click the removable storage and select the Delete volume option. To clean and format a USB flash drive, use these steps: 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.

(Optional) Check the Enable file and folder compression option.Īfter you complete the steps, the drive will be erased and reformatted to store data again.

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

(You can also select the 'FAT32' or 'exFAT' option.)

Use the 'File system' drop-down menu and select the NTFS option.

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

Right-click the removable drive and select the Format option. Search for Create and format hard disk partitions and click the top result to open the Disk Management tool.To use Disk Management to format a USB drive, use these steps: 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. The Disk Management tool offers at least two routes to format a USB flash drive.

How to format USB flash drive with Disk Management Once you complete the steps, the flash drive will be ready to store documents, pictures, videos, and other files on the removable drive. As a result, this process can take a long time, depending on the size of the drive. 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. Quick note: The 'Quick format' option only deletes the file system table and the root folder, but the data may still be recoverable.

Under the 'Format options' section, select the Quick format option.

In the 'Volume label' field, confirm a drive name that will appear in File Explorer.

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

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. 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. Use the 'File system' drop-down menu and select the NTFS option. Under the 'Devices and drives' section, right-click the flash drive and select the Format option. To format a USB flash drive using File Explorer on Windows 10, use these steps: How to format USB flash drive with File Explorer

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