In this lesson, I will be guiding you with the steps to safely format your USB drive.

Firstly, insert your USB drive into your computer and open up your command prompt (CMD).

Next, input the “diskpart” command on your CMD and a new pop up CMD will appear (figure 1). We will now be inputting commands into the diskpart.exe only.

(Figure 1)

Next, input “list disk” to see which disk is your USB located at. Mine is located at disk 1.

Next, input the disk you want to select. Since mine is disk 1, I will choose disk 1. Input command “select disk (your disk no.)” (figure 2). Input “list disk” to see if you have selected the right disk.

(Figure 2)

*Make sure you have selected the right disk before proceeding!

Next, input the command “clean”. Make sure “DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.” is displayed.

Next, input the command “create partition primary” and make sure “DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.” is displayed.

Next, input the command “select partition 1” (figure 3).

(Figure 3)

Next, input “format fs=ntfs quick” command and the USB will start to be formatted. Note: If you want your USB drive to work on both Windows and macOS, input “format fs=FAT quick” command.

Next, input “active” command to mark the current partition is active (figure 4).

(Figure 4)

You have now successfully formatted your USB drive.

I hope this article will be helpful to you. Feel free to leave any comments below. You may also send me some tips if you like my work and want to see more of such content. Funds will mostly be used for my boba milk tea addiction. The link is here. 🙂