Even though you took thousands of precautions to keep your drive fit and running, we know it is almost certain to encounter an error message at some point of time.
And while many of us aren’t tech genius fixing those issues isn’t easy, we all look for help.
But, without a proper understanding of the problem, sometimes things may backfire. So let’s start with the problem first…
What might go wrong when your storage device is not working?
So you’ve been running late for a very important presentation and suddenly your computer freezes. Basically it isn’t a PC problem, because it says your “drive is not accessible”.
This could be due to data corruption, a drive that shows the wrong capacity or a drive that cannot be formatted. Whenever, you fill your storage device with lots of stuff and there is no proper formatting then it is almost certain that you’ll face these problems.
So What You Do Now?
Whenever you come across a problem like this, first and foremost start by examining. Sometimes, when Windows does not detect the drive, all you need to do is turn off and turn on your system. Also at times, Windows does not see or recognize your drive at all. In that case unplug your drive and try plugging it in a different USB port. If it recognizes there and not in this one then, you simply have a dead USB port. After trying out both these things, if nothing works then all you need to do to is clean or format your storage drive. There are several ways to clean and format your drive, one of the easiest is by using Diskpart on windows 10.
Remember, when you are going to clean your storage drive, be sure to pay full Attention. You do not want to erase or clean out an important file which you might require later on. Using diskpart on windows 10 not only fixes your problem but it also erases everything you are going to select on that drive. So, before you go ahead with this make sure to do a complete back up of your system.
Launch a command prompt as administrator:
To be able to launch command prompt as administrator, you have to right-click the Start button or Press Windows Key+X and select Command Prompt(Admin).
Use Diskpart to clean the storage drive:
Make sure that you have connected your storage device whether it is a USB flash drive or SD card or any other storage drive.
- To launch the diskpart tool, type the following command ‘diskpart’ into the command prompt window and press Enter.
- Type the following command ‘list disk’ to list all the available drives and press Enter.
- Identify the drive you want to clean. Use the following command ‘select diskxxx’ to select the drive and press Enter.
Make sure you select the correct drive and type the correct disk number, if not you would have cleaned out on important data.
- Once, you have made sure that you selected the correct drive and typed in the correct disk number. You can now go ahead and type the following command ‘clean’ the drive and press Enter.
You have successfully used diskpart to clean the drive. In case, you have erased the wrong drive or accidently typed in the wrong disk number then you can always go to DIY guide on recovering partitions after using DiskPart
Initializing Partition of the disk:
You should be able to initialize partition and format the disk like you normally do.
- Start by typing the following command ‘create partition primary’ and press Enter.
- Now type the following command ‘select partition 1’ to select the partition you just created and press Enter.
- Now go ahead and set the partition active by typing the following command ‘active’ and press Enter.
Formatting the disk:
Now that you have been able to complete the partition you will now be initializing the formatting the disk to complete the process.
- Type the following command ‘format FS=NTFS label=WC-Drive quick’. Make sure that you replace ‘WC-Drive’ in the command with the drive name you want to use. This is to format the partition using NTFS and to set a label. Don’t forget to press Enter.
- Now, type the following command ‘assign letter=W’. Again, change the ‘W’ with a letter you want to use and press Enter.
- Finally type the ‘exit’ command to complete the task.
Formatting the USB flash drive and cleaning the drive using Diskpart can fix the storage capacity issues on the USB flash drive. We suggest you read this article if you are curious to know other ways to fix USB drive only showing half capacity.
Remember, you want to make sure you are cleaning out the right disk with the correct disk number. While there might be many other tools to format a drive, you want to avoid confusion and continue with diskpart so that the process is quick and complete. Also, it will save you the time and effort to recover data after quick format.
