It is really annoying to anyone to be unable to use the USB drive’s storage completely. This happens when your USB drive is infected with the malware, which hides the actual storage capacity. This not only hides the capacity of the drive but also you won’t be able to access our data either. So, how to get the drive’s full storage capacity?
Removing the partitions and cleaning the disk is one possible way out. This will fix the USB drives with formatting and capacity problems. If you are unable to access data, you can use software to recover USB data and proceed with the below-mentioned process. Basically, there are 2 stages:
1. Cleaning the Drive
2. Partitioning and formatting
How to Use DiskPart to Clean a Drive
First, launch the command prompt as Admin. In Windows 10 and 8, you can just right-click the Windows icon or you can press Windows Key + X and select ‘Command Prompt (Admin)’.
If you are using Windows 7, you have to search for Command Prompt by typing the same in the search box. Now, right-click on the shortcut Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator.
To use diskpart to clean the drive, make sure the USB drive, SD card or any other memory card that you want to clean is connected to your computer.
To launch the tool, type ‘diskpart’ command in the Command Prompt and press Enter.
Type ‘list disk’ command to know how many disks are connected to the computer.
If you carefully observe the image below; Disk 0 is 465 GB and Disk 1 is 4700 MB. The USB drive that we want to clean is 8 GB. By this, we know that Disk 0 is the computer’s internal drive and Disk 1 is the USB drive.
Warning!
Be careful with Disk number. If you select the wrong disk number, you’ll end up cleaning the wrong disk and lose all the data in it.
Once you are confirmed about the disk you want to clean, type ‘select disk’ followed by the ‘disk number’ and press Enter.
The diskpart has selected the disk you mentioned. Now, any action you perform will be performed on the chosen disk. To wipe the disk completely clean type command ‘clean’ and press Enter.
You’ll now see ‘diskpart succeeded in cleaning the disk’. So your disk has been wiped out and you are done this the task. Close the Command Prompt and continue to stage 2.
Stage 2
Formatting and partitioning the Disk
How you would normally initialize, format and partition a disk, you will be able to perform the same with ‘Clean’ USB drive. You can do this is in diskpart command itself, but it is much easier with Disk Management Tool.
Launch the Disk Management Tool, right click Windows icon and select ‘Disk Management’ in Windows 10 and 8. If it is Windows 7, open Run dialog box by pressing ‘Windows + R’ keys and type ‘diskmgmt.msc’ into the box and press Enter.
You can see the USB drive without partition. To create a partition and to format the disk with a file system, right-click on the ‘Unallocated’ space and choose ‘New Simple Volume’.
Conclusion
Now, if you have followed the right steps I cleaning and formatting the disk, your USB drive should show the full capacity and function properly. If it’s not working – like, you are trying to clean the disk and diskpart doesn’t recognize it, or unable to partition the drive, then the USB drive is physically damaged and cannot be used to its full capacity.
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