Are you getting the error “Windows Can’t Format USB Drive” or “Windows Was Unable to Complete the Format” on Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, or Windows 7? If yes, this step-by-step tutorial will help you fix, solve, and repair USB formatting errors on any laptop, PC, or computer.
This problem commonly occurs when trying to format a USB flash drive, pen drive, SD card, microSD card, external hard drive, SSD, or portable HDD, and Windows displays messages such as:
• Windows was unable to complete the format • Formatting did not complete successfully • Windows can’t format the drive • USB drive shows 0 bytes or unknown capacity • Unable to format SD card on Windows 10 / Windows 11
Even if File Explorer, Disk Management, or DiskPart fails to format the drive, this guide shows working solutions that apply to all Windows editions.
This issue affects storage devices from many popular brands, including: SanDisk, Kingston, Samsung, Toshiba, HP, WD My Passport, Seagate, Transcend, Lexar, PNY, ADATA, Crucial, Verbatim, TeamGroup, Patriot, Gigastone, Sony, and more.
It also happens on PCs and laptops from major manufacturers such as: Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, Acer, MSI, Samsung, Microsoft Surface, LG, Razer, Huawei, Sony VAIO, Fujitsu, Gateway, Toshiba, and others.
🔧 In this video, you’ll learn how to:
✔ Fix USB drives that won’t format (NTFS / FAT32 / exFAT) ✔ Repair corrupted SD cards and microSD cards ✔ Fix “formatting did not complete successfully” error ✔ Restore full capacity to USB drives showing 0 bytes ✔ Use Disk Management, DiskPart, CMD, and CHKDSK properly ✔ Repair drives showing “unknown capacity” ✔ Format USB, SD card, SSD, or external HDD on Windows 11/10/8/7
No matter if you’re using a USB pen drive, flash drive, SD card, memory card, SSD, external hard disk, or My Passport, this tutorial will help you repair, fix, and successfully format your drive.
🗎 Command Text (DiskPart Method):
diskpart list disk select disk (your-number) attributes disk clear readonly clean create partition primary format fs=ntfs quick
Keywords / Search Terms: Windows can’t format USB drive, Windows was unable to complete the format, USB formatting error Windows 11, fix USB not formatting Windows 10, formatting did not complete successfully, DiskPart clean USB, USB shows 0 bytes, unknown capacity USB, repair corrupted USB flash drive, fix SD card not formatting Windows, format external hard drive Windows, CMD format USB, CHKDSK USB error fix
00:00Hey everyone, welcome back to Victor Explains.
00:13In today's video, I'm going to show you how to fix the can't format USB drive or Windows was unable to complete the format error on Windows 11, 10, 8, or even Windows 7.
00:23So here's what we're going to do.
00:25First, open command prompt by typing cmd into the search box.
00:29Then right click it and choose run as administrator.
00:44Once command prompt is open, type disk part and hit enter.
00:50Then type list disk and press enter again.
00:54And also type select disk and now you must know your USB number that why this part is really important, you must know exactly which one is your USB drive.
01:03To double check, just right click the start button, open computer management and then go into disk management.
01:09And here we go, my USB shows up as disk 1.
01:18Yours might be different, so just match it based on the size.
01:22It might also show as raw, unallocated, or even completely blank, and that's fine.
01:27That simply means the drive is corrupted.
01:29Now, head back to command prompt and type, your USB number in my case is I will type 1 and press enter after that type at rebutes disk clear read only and press enter.
01:46Then type clean and hit enter again.
01:49Cleaning removes all corrupted partition information that's stopping Windows from formatting the drive.
01:55Next, we create a brand new partition by typing create partition primary and press enter.
02:01And finally, we format it by typing format FS equals NTFS quick and press enter.
02:06You can replace NTFS with FAT32 if you prefer that.
02:10I'm using NTFS with a quick format, which only takes a few seconds.
02:15And that's it, as soon as the format completes, the USB drive comes back to life and starts working normally again.
02:22When we open File Explorer, perfect!
02:29The drive is recognized, accessible, and formatting works just the way it should.
02:34When we open over to the USB drive, we look at this point of what is possible.
02:39Like this, the drive is not a virtual drive, but it's got a virtual drive, but we're going
02:44to get a power to use the drive class.
02:46We're going to go to the start.
02:47We're reading the drive for a couple of minutes.
02:48It's just that the drive to exit.
02:49If we're going to do this, we can just work at the end of the drive.
02:51Right?
02:52Now, if you get the drive on the drive, we're going to start to the drive.
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