However, due to extensive use, they tend to get corrupt, start misbehaving, and won’t work as intended. There’s this “Windows was unable to format pen drive” when users try to format the pen drive within the Windows interface. Luckily, you can fix this or, even better, use alternative options to format the drive. The important thing is not to have any encryption on your drive as Windows won’t format encrypted drives. Everything else you need is below.
How to format a pen drive if Windows failed to
Solution 1 – Try repairing pen drive
Firstly, let’s try switching USB ports and rebooting PC. Sometimes, the problem isn’t in the flash drive (pen drive) but rather in the USB port. If your PC is still unable to format the drive, even when plugged into a different port, we suggest going for repairs. These are not uncommon as flash drives are frequently forcibly plugged out. This, along with frequent read/write changes can lead to corruption or bad sectors. In order to fix the affected drive, follow these steps: If you’re still troubled by the “Windows was unable to format pen drive” error, just continue with other provided steps.
Solution 2 – Check drivers
Now, in this step, there are two variations. It depends. If your PC can ‘see’ the USB but can’t format it, you’ll need to check the pen drive’s drivers. On the other hand, if it’s unable to see the USB drive in the first place, the Universal Serial Bus controllers should be your concern. The latter occurs rarely and if it does, instead of driver issues, it points towards the flash drive malfunction. Nonetheless, it’s worth giving it a try. Here’s how to reinstall the pen drive driver: SPONSORED And this is how to reinstall USB controllers drivers: In any case, if you need to manage your drivers safely and more automatically using practical tools, you can consider a driver manager like DriverFix.
Solution 3 – Format the USB pen drive with Disk Management
Now, if the system on its own can’t access or format a USB pen drive, there are alternatives. More than few, actually. The first is Disk Management. This utility is the part of Windows and it’s used, as you might assume, to manage all storage disks, both internal and external. It can, of course, carry the load of formatting your pen drive without any issues. You just need to know where to find it. Follow these steps to format the USB pen drive with Disk Management:
Solution 4 – Format the USB pen drive with Command Prompt
Disk Management should allow you to format the USB pen drive without any problems. However, just for the sake of variety, we decided to add an extra method. Everything you do within the Windows UI, you can do through Command Prompt. Of course, if you know a proper set of commands to use. In this case, we’ll go with the diskpart utility which is commonly used to format and assign storage drives. Here’s how to format the USB pen drive with Command Prompt: With that said, we can conclude this article. In case you have any questions or alternative ways to deal with the “Windows was unable to format pen drive” error, feel free to tell us in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.
Name *
Email *
Commenting as . Not you?
Save information for future comments
Comment
Δ
