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I have a USB flash drive, which I may have mucked up, so I used DISKPART's CLEAN to clean it up. I created a simple volume, and tried to format it. (This is all using Windows' disk management.) I was told The system cannot find the file specified.

So I tried using DISKPART (as an admin):

DISKPART> select volume 9

Volume 9 is the selected volume.

DISKPART> format recommended

DiskPart has encountered an error: The system cannot find the file specified.
See the System Event Log for more information.

DISKPART>

As you can see, no luck.

When I plug the drive in, the computer makes a beep noise as though it has recognised something, but nothing appears in My Computer

How can I format the disk so I can use it again?

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12
  • is anything showing up in Device Manager? Try different usb port...
    – Logman
    Commented Nov 24, 2012 at 14:42
  • @Logman I tried a different port, formatting still failed. The device appears under Disk Drives in Device Manager (properties says it's working properly), but still nothing in My Computer, and no formatting
    – ACarter
    Commented Nov 24, 2012 at 15:06
  • try running CheckDisk? >chkdsk /r /f
    – Logman
    Commented Nov 24, 2012 at 20:17
  • 1
    In DiskPart do: 'SELECT VOLUME 6' then 'FORMAT RECOMMENDED', you format a volume, not a disk.
    – Peter Hahndorf
    Commented Nov 24, 2012 at 21:24
  • 1
    @PeterHahndorf you mean eventvwr.
    – joneshf
    Commented Sep 20, 2013 at 15:56

10 Answers 10

Reset to default
17

Just wanted to add another possible reason/solution for this error message. Problem: I had previously used this USB drive as a Chromebook recovery image holder and Win8 was giving me errors trying to format it. XP formatted it ok and showed a drive letter when the USB drive was inserted while Win8 did not.

Solution: I ended up using the Chromebook Recovery utility to erase the USB drive again (even though it had been formatted a few times in Windows) and Win8 was then happy with it again. https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/6002417?hl=en

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  • 2
    Tried all the other crap, including extensive use of DISKPART and nothing worked. After clearing the drive using the Recovery utility it worked fine. I must have been using this to try and install chrome OS on an old laptop and it had rendered the USB drive worthless.
    – Brett Green
    Commented Dec 25, 2016 at 1:28
  • 2
    Amazing. The Chrome App fixed it immediately.
    – Antiga
    Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 3:16
  • 6
    Diskpart clean then create partition 1 worked for me.
    – Motomotes
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 19:47
  • 2
    clean alone already did the job for me.
    – asynts
    Commented Mar 6, 2019 at 9:36
  • 2
    The Chromebook Recovery did the job. You're a fucking legend, my dude!
    – xwhitelight
    Commented Apr 26, 2020 at 14:10
118

Run diskpart and perform these commands:

LIST DISK
SELECT DISK x
CLEAN

(x being the number returned in the first command for the USB disk.)

Close diskpart.

Open Windows DiskAdministrator GUI.

You should now see the USB disk as an empty hard drive and be able to partition and format the USB disk as normal.

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16
  • This worked for me on Windows Server 2012R2.
    – Eris
    Commented Aug 19, 2014 at 18:06
  • 9
    Want to confirm that this is worked in windows 10 too. Had to try few times, CLEAN command error with Access Denied at the first try. Thanks!
    – fudanchii
    Commented Aug 3, 2015 at 1:39
  • 8
    clean did the trick! Awesome, I was almost throwing away the USB drive.
    – sunside
    Commented Sep 20, 2016 at 20:25
  • 8
    Doesn't work for me: clean says "DiskPart has encountered an error: Access is denied." even though I'm running diskpart as administrator.
    – BenMorel
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 11:13
  • 1
    @benjamin Windows can be a bit finicky at times. Keeping a lock on the disk while you are attempting to clean it. (Some virusscanners can cause this too.) You will have to try it a couple of times with a minute or 2 between attempts. See also the comment by fudanchii
    – Tonny
    Commented Sep 6, 2019 at 21:48
31

I had this issue when the USB key had been formatted with a linux install iso previously. To fix it, I ran the linux fdisk utility, removed all partitions, and then ran:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/XXX count=1 bs=4096

where XXX was sdb in my case.

This wiped the partition table completely, and on new insertion on windows, it was able to do a standard format. I clued in that it had something to do with the partition table, since windows disk manager showed the old partition layout after attempting to create a volume+format, despite the fact that I'd picked a different volume and file system size (i.e. attempting to create a 4G volume and filesystem restored the previous 2G partition in the disk manager display, despite starting from a non-partitioned state).

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  • 3
    Perfect! This one's going in my permanent reference file.
    – Tyr
    Commented Jan 3, 2017 at 8:47
  • 1
    I'm not sure I understand why that worked instead of being able to delete and create a partition in DISKPART or FDISK, but the SD card works in Windows now.
    – James
    Commented Feb 3, 2017 at 7:25
  • 8
    Yet another case of turning to Linux tools to fix issues in Windows, thanks buddy.
    – JazzCat
    Commented May 15, 2017 at 16:44
  • 1
    For me the problem occurred after creating a linux install usb stick with "Win32 Disk Imager" and the solution from this post worked for me.
    – Knitschi
    Commented Dec 22, 2018 at 13:34
  • 1
    Actually, a terminal command was not even necessary. MacOS's Disk Utility was able to easily reformat the problematic (in Windows) USB drive and restore it to working order without any issue.
    – Daniel
    Commented Dec 1, 2021 at 21:17
4

I was unable to format a 32GB USB stick using tools from either Ubuntu, win8 disk manager or diskpart, after my son formatted it for a Linux Anaconda boot device. Fix was to use diskpart-list disk-select disk-delete partition override and finally CLEAN. This removed underlying attributes and I was able to create a new primary partition and format as NTFS again!

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4

I recommend using Mark Tomlin's answer at Recovering a Partially Formatted USB Thumb Drive. If that doesn't work, try then using diskpart to clean the disk again and convert to GPT. The conversion to GPT seems to restore the USB drive to a usable state, which convert to MBR does not always manage. You should now be able to create a primary partition and format it. I then had a little difficulty in converting back to MBR, but managed it OK as explained in my answer on the other post. I hope that this helps.

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1
  • This is what fixed my thumb drive. For me I didn't need to format it back to MBR. I simply stayed with GPT + FAT32 (FWIW, FAT32 under GPT is called "Basic Data Partition", with the GUID EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 according to this.) Indeed, as JazzCat commented, yet another case of turning to Linux tools to fix issues in Windows.
    – Boson Bear
    Commented Sep 17, 2022 at 22:55
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UNetbootin can create a bootable Live USB drive, or it can make a "frugal install" on your local hard disk if you don't have a USB drive. It loads distributions either by downloading a ISO (CD image) files for you, or by using an ISO file you've already downloaded.

Try using UNetbootin to format and create a live linux on your thumb drive directly. If this does not work, I would use UNetbootin to create a PartedMagic live cd/dvd/usb (device other than the one you are having troubles with) and boot to it and try to access the problem usb device and wipe it clean with Parted Magic.

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1

I had this issue when I had a hard drive in a dock plugged into a SS USB Port. I changed to a standard USB port and worked like a charm. This was odd though because this only happened sometimes in the SS USB Port. But hope this helps!

Thanks.

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1

I had the same issue (CLEAN command => error with Access Denied), and luckily my usb key was USB-C.

I simply connected it to my Android phone and clicked on Format.

Then it was immediately fixed, even in Windows 10 :)

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0

None of the answers solved the issue here today in 2023 so I ended up using SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows/Mac from sdcard.org Association to format and fix the USB drive. Hope this helps.

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-2

What works for me is trying different slots until it recognizes it and then trying the diskpart method. But if it doesn't work I use EaseUS Partition Master and then it does. This can often happen after making a boot disk with TransMac.

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1
  • This doesn't really answer the question of how to solve the issue using the tools suggested and is a bit of a low quality software recommendation. You should describe, if possible, why he problem occurs and preferably how to use the tool suggested in order to clear the problem.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Commented Feb 12, 2018 at 11:07

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