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I've just brought a 64GB USB Flash Drive. I've used it with Windows Media Creation Tool to install windows on a new SSD.

Now i want to format and use it as a normal flash drive.

Problem is: when the Flash Drive was new it was displaying something like 57/58GBs of storage capacity (some gigs less 64gb).

But after using Windows Media Creation Tool it displays it's storage capacity as 31,9GB. When i right-click it and click format it only gives me the option to formatting with a 32GB capacity.

Question: how can i bring the usb flash drive back to it's original state?

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  • Open it in diskmgmt.msc or a third-party tool such as DiskGenius, diskgenius.com , delete all partitions, and create one 64-GB partition (exFAT, most likely).
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Jan 17, 2020 at 2:07

1 Answer 1

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The easiest way to do something like this is to use Windows' built-in Disk Management tool (diskmgmt.msc). Here, you can see your disks, their partitions, and other useful information. You should be able to find your drive listed there. You can then right-click and delete the 32GB partition that the Media Creation Tool made for you and recreate a new, 64(ish)GB partition.

If that doesn't work, you may be able to use the command-line tool DiskPart which is included in Windows as well.

  1. Start Command Prompt or PowerShell as an administrator.
  2. Start up DiskPart by typing diskpart.
  3. Run list disk to find the disk number of your USB drive.
  4. Run select disk x where x is the number of your USB drive from step 3.
  5. Run clean.
  6. Run create partition primary.

At this point, your drive should have a 64GB partition that isn't formatted. You should be able to format this partition from the Disk Management tool, but if you want to just go ahead and do it while you're in DiskPart, it's very simple. After running create partition primary, that partition will be selected and all you will have to do is run format fs=ntfs quick (assuming you want it to be formatted NTFS).

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