Recently I attempted to make a bootable usb featuring the mxLinux operating system. It didn’t go so well. I got an error message saying the USB could not be used. When I opened it in file manager, the USB was corrupt.
So I thought I would just reformat the usb and try again…it wasn’t that easy. My 128 GB usb was now only 1.6GB.
I know I have had this problem before, and I solved it before, but it’s been a while and I don’t remember how I fixed it
This time, I thought I would document the steps.
What I did:
First I tried to do a Quick Format the USB. Sadly, this failed.
When I selected format I got the format dialog as expected.
But note that the capacity is only 1.6GB on a 128GB usb.
Next I selected “Restore device defaults” and gave it the volume label “Labrat”
I clicked “ok” on the warning.
After the format completed I tested the usb.
And…. unfortunately it is still only 1.6GB.
Next I launched “disk management” in windows. To get to disk management, just type “disk management” in the search bar. The disk management utility should show up, if not it may show “create and format hard drive partitions” instead.
Under volume you will see the USB volume that was just created – Labrat in this case
Click on this volume and it will show you the partition in the window below.
I see that I have an unallocated partition.
To fix this I need to use a system utility called “Diskpart”.
Note that diskpart is a powerful utility. It can wipe out a hard drive is one fell swoop. Please use your knowledge for good.
The first thing you want to do is clean off your usb drive of any files you want to keep. We are going to wipe everything off of it in the following steps.
Open a command window “cmd”
Type in “Diskpart” at the command prompt. You’ll see the following prompt: DISKPART>
Type in “LIST DISK” take note of the number of your USB drive.
Type “SELECT DISK x” where x is the number of your usb drive. Diskpart will now confirm that Disk x is now selected.
Type Select Partition 1. A USB drive can have multiple partitions, but your USB should only have one. Diskpart will now tell you that Partition 1 is now the selected partition.
Type “DELETE PARTITION”. This will delete the old partition. Make sure you want to do this, there is no going back.
Type “CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY”. This should create a new, full-sized partition. Disk part will confirm with “Diskpart succeeded in creating the specified partition.”
Now type in “List Partition” to confirm that you have one, full sized partition.
Finally, Type Exit to exit Diskpart.
Now, when you insert your USB, you should be prompted to format it. You can format the USB in the usual way using the windows format utility.
It really surprised me the first time I created a bootable linux usb and found I could not reformat the usb when I was done with it. It took me some time to figure out what was going on here, so I thought my struggle and solution could be helpful to others.
If you found this helpful or something is unclear, let me know in the comments.
