Windows 10: Cannot clean/format spare drive

Last time I opened up my PC, I installed an old ~600 GB HDD from a previous computer. I recently decided (after a headache involving the BIOS deciding it wanted to boot to said drive) to format it, and reclaim that space for my current PC. However, every time I try to get Win10 to reformat the drive, it keeps telling me that the drive is in use. This even happens in Safe Mode. So, I figured that, while in Safe Mode, I would bring up a command prompt, open up DISKPART, and clean the drive from there. Didn't work, same error. Anyone have any ideas?

Here's a screenshot taken from when I was using the command prompt in Safe Mode: https://imgur.com/a/u2dowpZ

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:)

 

How To Format A Write Protected Flash Memory ?

¿You already tried this one?...

Run CMD


1. diskpart
2. list disk

Then in the 3º step, put the correct number of disk in the list for the usb flash (if it's listed in disk 3, then you'll have to write select disk 3).

2. select disk #
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

with that commands you will format the flash drive in fat32, if you have a large drive you can select also "format fs=ntfs" in step 7.

good luck!

 

Format an external Drive.

Hello Roger,

Thank you for posting your concern in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

I would suggest you to follow the below steps to format the drive you are referring to.

• Right Click on Start menu and select Open Computer Management.
  
• 
  In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management.
  
• 
  Right-click the volume that you want to format, and then click Format.
  
• 
  To format the volume with the default settings, in the Format dialog box, click
  OK, and then click OK again.
  

Note: You cannot format a disk or partition that is currently in use, including the partition that contains Windows.

Hope it helps.

Thank you.

 

clean possibly infected flash drives and CD-RWs

Your steps in post #1 should work for 99% of viruses that may be on a usb flash drive. However, there are a very few viruses that can infect the MBR of a drive. I would use Diskpart from a command prompt (Admin) to clean them. In the command prompt type DISKPART then, at the Diskpart prompt use the commands:

LIST DISKnote the disk number of the usb and use it in place of # in the command:SELECT DISK #
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

After this you will have cleaned the partition table from the usb and created a partition using the whole of the the available space. You can then format this partition in File Explorer.


For a CD-RW, if you right-click on it in File Explorer there is an Erase option.