Windows tells me that I cannot format the USB, what do I do?

You should know that the “formatting” process has not changed at all in 30 years. Actually, this function with the menu that we see was something temporary, designed in an improvised way in an afternoon. This causes this option within Windows to often fail.

There are different reasons why the formatted of one pen drive it can not be done. These are:

• It has write protection.
• It may contain a virus or malware that prevents the process.
• Unit of poor quality or has some type of damage.
• Memory life has been exceeded.
• Incompatible file system.

Although it may seem impossible, there is always an option to format the USB memory, unless it is broken. If we have a physical problem, we may not be able to format it in any way and if we do, it may cause other problems.

Reinstall drivers

It is not the most normal, but there is a possibility that the drivers are causing problems. It may be a long time since they have been updated and it is necessary. It is also possible that a Windows update has damaged them. Anyway, this has an easy solution:

1. Right click on the Windows icon and now on the “Device Manager” option.
2. We must now locate the “Universal serial bus controllers” section that refers to USB and clicking on it will expand it.
3. Find the drive we want to format, which usually appears as “USB Storage Device.”
4. We right click and click “Uninstall” to remove the drivers.
5. We remove the USB memory from our computer and connect it again. Now Windows will automatically install the driver and the problem should be solved.

We recommend checking for general USB driver updates using the Driver Booster tool. This software will search for the latest version of the system drivers and thus we can install the latest version.

Format with Disk Management

Let’s say this option is the advanced version of the “Format” mode. All versions of Windows have a “Disk Manager” that allows you to view the drives, their capacity and formats. In addition, it has additional functions such as formatting or generating partitions, among others.

Accessing and formatting through “Disk Management” is very simple:

1. Right click on the Windows icon and in the drop-down menu click on the “Disk Management” option.
2. All available storage units will appear.
3. We have to right click on the drive we want to format.
4. Within the drop-down menu we must choose the “Format” option.
5. We will get a notice that if we complete the process, all data will be lost and we click “Yes.”
6. Next, a box appears with these data:
   • Volume Label: Name of the drive that will be displayed in Windows
   • File system: The type of format, which will be NTFS by default, but we can change it to exFAT, never do it in FAT32.
   • Allocation unit size: We leave it at default.
   • Quick format: You must remove this selection for the process to finish correctly. It will be a slower process, but it will eliminate errors on the drive, ensuring formatting.
7. We click “Accept” and wait for the process to finish.

After this the unit should function normally. If it is not corrected, we will have to explore other options.

Forced with Diskpart

If none of this has worked, we can do it with a machete. Within Windows there is a Diskpart function that, we can say, passes everything and formats the storage units.

This mechanism is done through the “Command Prompt” as Administrator and through commands. Anyone can do it, although it is a somewhat more advanced process because it requires commands. Anyway, we have a very complete guide to formatting a disk with Diskpart.

Here it doesn’t matter if it has write protection, there is some malware that prevents formatting and so on, it will do it no matter what. You should know that this formatting process is slow and may take a while.