Making My Unusable USB Stick Usable Again
Posted by William Diaz on June 11, 2012
I had a USB flash device that just stopped working suddenly. When I plugged it in, the following message popped up in Windows: “You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it.”
That was odd because earlier it was formatted with FAT32 and seemed to be working normally (copied files to it). Luckily, I didn’t have anything important stored on it, clicked Format disk and was the presented with the format options and selected Start.
To my surprise, the USB flash stick would not format, returning the error “Windows was unable to complete the format.” This was followed by: “Windows can’t format E. Check to see that the disk and drive are connected properly, make sure the disk is not read only….”
I doubted stick had become physically defective from one short moment to the next. What likely happened was that I “hosed” it while running a utility that was supposed to make it bootable. To see if I could fix it, I went into diskpart. You start diskpart from the the command line. I started by looking at all the volumes on the system:
You can see the USB stick (Volume 2, Drive E) has a status of Unusable. Likely the partition was removed. To switch to the desired volume, use the Select Volume # command. Afterwards, I confirmed with the list partition command:
Well, we can’t format until a partition exist and there is no GUI for that. Diskpart to the rescue, just run create partition primary:
Now we can format the USB stick with with a file system from the GUI or with diskpart using the format command.
Windows Explored 
gtho1goford said
thanx for this 1 q how do i select the usb drive my drive is volume 4 G removeable it doesnt show that its 16gb just 0 any ideas thanx
gtho1 said
hi i have done as said but how do i select the usb +it comes as volume 4 G REMOVEABLE with 0 on size ,it it a 16gb so any ideas wld greatly used .
William Diaz said
Ack, I see I forgot to add that part. Use Select Volume #. Will update the article
udeth said
Wow!..thanks a lot. i thought i damaged my flash drive..thanks again! ^^
gift said
Thanx a lot I’m a final year I.T student but this I ddnt knew.
cLaudine said
Can you help me with my problem? I already followed all the steps,..and in the end can finally see the file system from the GUI of it,..but then I actually got a little excited, coz I thought I have finally fixed it and then I plug off the external hard drive I’m fixing and I forgot to format it before removing it,..so I plug it in again and my problems got worse,..it all comes back to zero so I started trying to do the steps again, but I never saw the file system from the GUI again so I tried to format it using the cmd command prompt but it didn’t work so I tried to use the command CLEAN in the cmd after using CLEAN command it say’s that the hard drive is now UNINITIALIZED,..i tried to do everything i could but it didn’t work. whenever I am plugging in my hard drive in every laptop or computers it didn’t show up or even pop up a notification that it is already installing a new hardware,..i can’t even find my hard drive in “my computer” folder,..the computer is not reading it. why?
what have i done,..?
I’m sorry I just got a little confused at some point,..can you help me please,..Thanks!
Alexander said
hey looked i have a kingston data traveler 111 32 gb and it has somehow lost its partitions but everytime i try following your guide when i get to creating the partition i get an error and that i can look in the log to figure out more,?? it won’t let me create a new partition? can you help?
William Diaz said
Error details?
pamela said
when i try to create the partition this is the error i get: “diskpart has encountered an error: the system cannot find the file specified. See the system event log for more information.”
emmanuelmwewa said
I Have the same problem and error
DiskPart has encountered an error: The system cannot find the file specified.
See the System Event Log for more information.
What do I do now?
Thom said
check your spelling I wrote partion instead of partition when i corrected it it worked
Vishal said
Today World Need Experts like you thank for sharing post, it makes my pen drive usable again 🙂
ravinder said
Excellent..! Great Work.
Vishruth said
Hi, Nice writeup. I have 1 problem. Hope you can give me some hints.
When I run “CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY SIZE=1000” i get an error:
“No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient
free space to create a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify
different size and offset values or don’t specify either to create the
maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR disk
partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no
more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended
partition, (only logical drives may be created).”
dale said
same case here..
need help to fix my flash drive
malu said
same is the problem with mine too. please help me.
Punit Sharma said
Hey Hi,
While checking the partition as “D: list partition” the list of index is showing of Diskpart eq:- ADD – Add a mirror to a simple volume, ACTIVE – Marks the current basic partition as an active boot partition….etc….
please suggest some way out…..as in Diskpart volume is showing perfectly but while doing formatting it shows windows is unable to complete formatting…
please help!
Regard,
PUNIT S.
ghade said
it says “the parameter is incorrect” what do i do?
William Diaz said
first guess is the file system is borked. Verify it is formatted, if not, format it (you will loose any data on it but that may already be a given).
Guillermo said
when i try to create the partition this is the error i get: “diskpart has encountered an error: the system cannot find the file specified. See the system event log for more information.”
LifeSaver said
MAn i dont know who you are but i will find you and i will marry you ……. 🙂
William Diaz said
send me a picture
woodartisan said
I couldn’t get it to delete the volume or the partition. Once I selected the disk, however, I was able to use the “clean” command and voila! You must be in elevated command prompt before you go into diskpart also.
musa said
You are really good at it! Thank you so much, my disk is now fully recovered.
DAIMEX said
Hello to everyone. I want to say, that if you had a problem with your flash drive, saying that it is 0 mb or b, and you can’t format it with windows, device manager or recover it by using programs, or get no result after cleaning the chip, I have the solution. I had this problem today and I manage to solved by using my Xbox 360 console. I put in the Xbox, format it for Xbox and it was fully recovered. That’s how I save my 64 GB flash drive. So if you have any console, try to insert the flash there and format it using the console. Hope this will help you too 🙂
Nick said
Thank you so much for this article. I have been searching for answers and can’t believe it was this easy.
Matthew said
Hello,
I tried to follow your steps in repairing my usb drive, but instead of the status presenting itself as unusable, it is healthy. However, the file system is listed as RAW. When I attempted to create a partition primary, the cmd said that I couldn’t because no free space could be found. Some background regarding the usb, it was originally FAT32 but I formatted it to NTFS so that I could put a 4.15 GB video on it. Everything went smoothly, and I played the video on my television, but then when I turned the tv off and on the usb could not be found. When I plugged it back into my computer, it had changed to a RAW system and displays 0 bytes of room. I’m unable to format or do anything to it. I’ve tried checking it for errors and not had any success. I was wondering if you might be able to help me as you put together this great guide for a similar situation!
Thanks,
Mattthew
DISKPART> list volume
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
———- — ———– —– ———- ——- ——— ——–
Volume 0 E DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 C Windows8_OS NTFS Partition 891 GB Healthy Boot
Volume 2 D LENOVO NTFS Partition 25 GB Healthy
Volume 3 WINRE_DRV NTFS Partition 1000 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 4 SYSTEM_DRV FAT32 Partition 260 MB Healthy System
Volume 5 PBR_DRV NTFS Partition 12 GB Healthy Hidden
Volume 7 F RAW Removable 7680 MB Healthy
DISKPART> select volume 7
Volume 7 is the selected volume.
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
————- —————- ——- ——-
* Partition 1 Primary 7680 MB 0 B
DISKPART> create partition primary
No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient
free space to create a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify
different size and offset values or don’t specify either to create the
maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR disk
partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no
more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended
partition, (only logical drives may be created).
jaganathan said
same scenario for me also.. plz help us
Harvey Auman said
me too
pls help us
soe htay said
Try by below command…
create partition primary size=7680
Phantom said
dude it says: “DiskPart has encountered an error: Incorrect function”
ksn said
Thanks a Lot !!!
Dalma said
Thank you!!!! It was very useful 🙂
Ash said
can you help me to format my pendrive which has status of unusable
Kaustubh Muley said
hi there, I just followed all step until “Create partition primary” but when i hit enter i get this error
“DISKPART> create partition primary
DiskPart has encountered an error: Incorrect function.
See the System Event Log for more information.”
what do i do now?
Kaustubh Muley said
Hi there, I followed all step as given above but m good till “Select volume 3”
But when i go for next step “create partition primary” i get this
“DISKPART> create partition primary
DiskPart has encountered an error: Incorrect function.
See the System Event Log for more information.”
mello said
didnot work for me
mani said
diskpart has encountered an error : The request could not be performed because of an I/O error
Miki said
Thank you! I was doing everything right except I didn’t know I needed to make the partition first. I was about to give up on my 128gb stick!
Jane said
Hi, I did all the steps but when I tried to create a new partition, it shows an error that the media has change. 😦 what will i do
janjan said
DISKPART> list volume
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
———- — ———– —– ———- ——- ——— ——–
Volume 0 C Acer NTFS Partition 28 GB Healthy Boot
Volume 1 ESP FAT32 Partition 100 MB Healthy System
Volume 2 Recovery NTFS Partition 500 MB Healthy Hidden
* Volume 3 D Removable 0 B Unusable
DISKPART> select volume 3
Volume 3 is the selected volume.
DISKPART> list partition
There are no partitions on this disk to show.
DISKPART> create partition primary
DiskPart has encountered an error: The parameter is incorrect.
See the System Event Log for more information.
I don’t know what to do next?
Edgar Machuca said
wow i just followed your guide, excellent by the way, but I still cant confirm it worked for me because i used diskpart for formatting also, but wow that way is slow… I guess its writing ceros all over my usb drive..
Michael said
I’m an idiot that though I destroyed my new 128 GB stick by messing around with it. Thank you for negating my idiocy.
Madhuranga said
thank you so much.nice work.
abhinav said
guys my usb stick has bad sectors and I cant make partitions or format it any ideas
Pedro Pablo said
Just perfect!!!
Manoj Singh said
In my case diskpart says:-
Diskpart has encountered an error: The device is not ready.
See the System Event Log for more information.
System Event Log: Level Date and Time Source Event ID Task Category
Information 11-12-2017 14:09:21 Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-PnP 410 None “Device USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_SRT&Prod_USB&Rev_1100\AAVDPP2JDM2Q20J0&0 was started.
Driver Name: disk.inf
Class Guid: {4d36e967-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Service: disk
Lower Filters:
Upper Filters: “
Zahid said
Thanks dear, I was able to save many of my USB drives
Frank said
I have a 64GB thumb drive that is showing as ‘read only’. I have used the diskpart command “attributes disk clear readonly” and get a “disk attributes cleared successfully”. However, I am still unable to format the drive (read only) and diskpart is STILL reporting the drive as readonly. Any ideas on how to get this thing out of readonly ???? Thanks.
jim said
you every gunna answer these people’s questions mr expert? its been years
William Diaz said
Sorry, I rarely have time to look at replies. So much IT.
kalyan said
I get below error ,please help. My pen drive is actually 32gb and shows as 64mb RAW and also doesn’t show unallocated space too.
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
————- —————- ——- ——-
* Partition 1 Primary 64 MB 0 B
DISKPART> create partition primary
No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient
free space to create a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify
different size and offset values or don’t specify either to create the
maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR di
sk
partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no
more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended
partition, (only logical drives may be created).
Ali said
thanks
emmanuelmwewa said
DiskPart has encountered an error: The system cannot find the file specified.
See the System Event Log for more information.
That’s what mine is saying…. what do i do next
Aidan Burns said
After these steps it says the system cannot find the file specified
Mimeo said
Please try it.
>diskpart
>list disk
>select disk [number]
>list volume
>select volume [number]
>format fs=ntfs
>assign letter
>exit
>exit
If DISKPART cannot get that goal either, we may try to connect the disk to Linux system and format it into FAT32 instead of NTFS, then connect it to Windows system again and try it.
Best Regards,
YD
Go here said
index
Making My Unusable USB Stick Usable Again