common USB drive problem solved. Drop us a LIKE 👍

Still saving lives 2 years after the original upload, thanks man

This has solved a real headache of a problem I was having with a USB stick. Lesson learned that you can't always easily swap a USB stick between Windows NTFS & Linux EXT4 filing systems. The memory stick worked perfectly fine in Linux even with NTFS, but Windows just wouldn't mount it or even format it when I tried. Third party software seemed to be able to format it, but the problem appeared to be I couldn't get the USB to take a letter - hence without a path, Windows won't mount it for access. DiskPart wouldn't even clear it - your attributes command must have done something to allow everything to start working again. Nightmare nearly over now haha, thank you sir!

I had a pendrive which was used on MacOS and the disk manager wouldn't format it or give it a letter. Then I found this video and with the command prompt inputs it worked like a charm. Thanks dude!

Damn after watching 25 videos, I have finally found video that solved my problem. Literally I was so fed up that I was gonna crush my usb.

Saved my day, thanks. Very easy and clear instructions helped. Other vids not really helped. This worked first and every time.

thank you Brian, been coming for years for every screw up i did to my pc, cant believe its now my flash drive, followed step by step and fixed it perfectly, thanks again.

Britec is the best. Every tutorial I have watched in this channel has never failed. Still following you guys since 2017. I just subbed here with my other account. Thanks again men. You are a genius

Thank you a 1000 times. I tried it all, only your solution worked

This is perfect!! I've been searching for an hour for this walkthrough. Thanks!!

I had this problem on Windoze 10, and this is too much work. I normally use Linux, so I put the USB drive in Linux and took care of it. Microsoft needs to fix this problem, because I got a feeling it is more common than we might think. Good video for anyone without a Linux computer.

I spent hours looking for a solution... THANK YOU SO MUCH.

I was using rufus to write this thumb drive and windows defender didnt like something, halted the operation and rendered the drive useless, providing no further info. This got it working again ! thank you thank you.

I can't thank you enough for this vid. I was able to fix my acer computer by using this method to format my internal hard drive. I just had to delete all the partitions and format the full unallocated space using diskpart and follow your instructions which were very well done and easy to follow and see. All I had to do after doing that was change it to GPT and I was able to install a fresh Windows 10 OS. Cheers. I've been trying to fix this thing for over a year and if not for finding your vid I would have given up. So you saved me large bud, thank-you.

your videos are honestly legendary, by far my favourite tech support youtuber on this platform

Thank You for making and uploading this Video .. I'm having a Problem with a USB Drive .. I followed your instructions - but got this .. "" DISKPART> attributes disk clear readonly Disk attributes cleared successfully. DISKPART> clean DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk. DISKPART> create partition primary No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient free space to create a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify different size and offset values or don't specify either to create the maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR disk partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended partition, (only logical drives may be created). DISKPART>

That was so seamless and straightforward your steps, thank you 🙏🏻

thanks a lot, the only person who actually helped with a working instruction guide. I thought i fried my usb stick or something

Fantastic! I've tried dos commands and did not work. Added "Clean" and "create primary" to my steps and it worked!!! Thanks Britec09!!

Wow! Brain Its been 1 year and 1 million views since you did "How to fix USB drive not recognized in Windows 10" Its crazy how they tried to kill DOS but you can still do the Dos style commands in windows 11 decades later 🤓👍🏻

Wow Thanks a lot man. Still now working. This is the real content.

Thank you!!!! This video came in time to prevent me from throwing away a couple of "damaged" flash drives. I love the content... keep them coming :-)

thank you, I was going to buy a new usb memory stick but you saved the day

After I click create partition primary, I received this error Message: (No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient free space to create a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify different size and offset values or don't specify either to create the maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR disk partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended partition, (only logical drives may be created).

I thought my USB is a goner after I used it to download some file to fix my phone, but now it working again, thank you very much 💕

This also worked on a faulty USB stick. But did full format, it took a while but now works great thanks.

A relatively little known and forgotten shortcut feature of diskpart that has been in there since the days of NT is the fact you only need to type in enough of most commands and arguments that will uniquely identify them, in most cases the 1st 3 characters of most commands and arguments are enough eg: lis dis sel dis 2 att dis clear readonly cle cre par pri ass letter=z for quick

Thank you so much for this tutorial. It worked like a dream and rescued an unusable USB drive.

Thanks! You really made that so easy to follow. You're a Godsend. Thank you so very much.

Thanks you! This work great! I literally tried every other thing I could find on KZfaq before finally fixing the issue with your video.

Lovely, I don't regretting clicking on your vidoe, almost gave up on the 1st video I came across when a gent stated it's corrupted or unretrievable. Clearly you know your stuff!

Holy.. someone actually knows what he's talking about. It took me 3 articles, 5-6 videos on KZfaq and all of them didn't fix my issue. Thank you @Britec09 your method actually saved my USB!

I have tried all the other ways to fix my usb but I wasn't able to fix it. I tried the first method is this video and I was able to fix it in seconds! 👍 Thanks alot!

Awesome! I love it when you show and instruct us on how to properly use the command prompt. I am somewhat familiar with this from the old DOS days, but could not remember all the commands. That's how I first learned computers. The command prompt is very useful but sometimes scary. That's one of the reasons why I love it when you do these videos on it. Way too many commands for me to remember. But still it's kinda fun to do. Thank you Brian.

Dear Britec09, I am unable to go beyond "Clean", since the error says "DiskPart has encountered an error: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. See the System Event Log for more information." Kindly help

Thank you!!! you really helped me my problem was "This disk is write protected" I tried other solutions on google and youtube, but non of them worked, but your method is works really well.

Thank you so very much. This was driving me crazy. So what is the root cause of USB drives that were working fine to suddenly go readonly? Is this a Windows security issue?

I gave up though i need a new USB drive this video fix my drive and it 100% works

Great video! Your clear and concise information helped me very well. Thank you!

still working 2 years later thanks

Thank you for this, saved my 128gb usb! Earned a sub.

Thank you for this tutorial! I managed to format an Samsung EVO 8 used previously as system disk in an desktop computer, than as an USB drive. With windows disk management utility I had no options to format entire disk but thanks to your tutorial, it was very simple.👍

thanks my dude, in my case it initiated formatting but could never be completed. i just waited for it to finish like a moron till I found this video.

After i write "clean" and run it says this error - DiskPart has encountered an error: G/C The request could not be executed due to a device problem. See the System Event Log for more information. what should i do

Thanks for the tutorial. Worked like a champ. At the end, you checked the freshly cleaned, partitioned, and formatted drive for "viruses." Where might a virus reside on that drive, at this point?

Was just having this problem, and your Video Came right on time. Thnx

Your solution worked. Thank you so much. I thought my usb has hardware problem.

Litreally recovered a small batch of Sandisk 32GB drives this way. 🙏Thank you so much!

Thanks man I can't express how grateful I am for this tutorial

The only video that actually fixed my issue.

I went through so many videos and all of them were missing the part where you enter "format fs=fat32 quick" thanks for the video as my USB had many issues after installing the Zorin boot media

thank you this is the only video that worked. THANK YOU SO MUCH👍

Thanks to you I have my first working USB! Cause I was never good at this kinda stuff and was so confused why it wouldn't format.

This is the only video that worked for me. Thank you so much.

I was struggling man u are the best this video get five stars it was really helpful thanks ❤️

Thanks Brian that is really useful. It is interesting to see examples of windows tasks that need to be done from the terminal.

thank you so much brother... you saved my 2 64gig usb's

Thankyou for saving me loads of trouble. Did it and it works.

How can you remember so much of the commands in rectifying problems, I'm in awe of your knowledge, keep up the good work, your videos are very helpful. 👍 😎

"Attributes disk clear readonly"-trick worked for me. Thanks :) I could format via windows GUI after that was done

Thank you so much for this video, I managed to restore 3 non functional USB sticks just by formatting them and than using this tutorial, nothing else worked for me

very very good. Took me 5 minutes to solve this problem, after many hours of frustration

This is the only solution that worked for my USB drive. Thank you!

Thank you. You just save me some money and wish I had found you earlier. I've thrown away flash drives in the past because of the this problem.

Amazing tutorial clear and simple, helped me out tremendously in bringing back a 1tb usb I thought was gone for good :)

Excellent video, thanks for the guide. Worked like a charm.

Excellent, I could not format a thumb drive after making it multi-bootable. This fixed it!

When attempting to clear the drive it says access is denied, even after trying to clear read only 3 times I keep getting this error when clearing afterwards

got an error when i went did the clean command

This is by far the best help with this issue!🎉

Thank you so much Sir🙏🙏. It really worked

Also can't format it. Nothing happens. This is an unused SSD drive in a USB case that has USB A at one end and USB C at the other end. It's literally just barely recognizable on my system at all. I'm wondering if it's the case instead of the drive. I tried re-seating the drive and it's not making any difference. I also tried updating the drive's drivers and that didn't help either.

Thanks i was ready to put my 64GB stick in the bin, but you saved it Thankyou very much...

What of if you want to tap the USB or SD card and the file exploration USB flash is not responding what should I do

Oh man the cmd method works perfectly thank you

Thank you very much with this video i saved a usb drive.

awesome video !! but i had a problem saying that no volume was select, after a little research i got it to work :) if anyone is having the same problem as me, here is how i did it DISKPART> list disk Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- --- Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB Disk 1 Online 931 GB 1024 KB * Disk 2 Online 30 GB 29 GB DISKPART> sel dis 2 Disk 2 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> cre par pri size=30000 DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition. DISKPART> sel par 1 Partition 1 is now the selected partition. DISKPART> active DiskPart marked the current partition as active. DISKPART> format fs=fat32 quick 100 percent completed DiskPart successfully formatted the volume. DISKPART> assign letter=F(a letter of ur choice) DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

Interesting. I've never used the "attributes disk clear readonly" command/switch. I've only simply used the Clean command which seems to work good enough. What does the attributes command do that Clean doesn't do?

THANK YOU!! This worked for me. I had been trying for the past 3 days to figure out want was wrong and your video popped up as a suggestion.

thank you so much, finally i was able to format my usb

you just saves my USB 3.1`s life thank you sir

What to do if after step 5 command "clean" i got error: "DiskPart has encountered an error: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. See the System Event Log for more information." Edit:i changed usb slot and after clean i got "No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient free space to create a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify different size and offset values or don't specify either to create the maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR disk partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended partition, (only logical drives may be created)."

Thank you so much you saved my usb we both thank you for saving his life👍

Thanx for that. I haven't come across this issue but have bookmarked this video. Could you have done this from the Windows Disk manager??

DISKPART> select disk 1 Disk 1 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> attributes disk clear readonly Disk attributes cleared successfully. DISKPART> clean DiskPart has encountered an error: A device which does not exist was specified. See the System Event Log for more information. DISKPART> please help me

Thank you! Fixed my USB perfectly!

This was so helpful to me, thank you

Thanks buddy ❤❤ I appreciate your work 👏👏

thanks man ,i was trying from 2 hours !!

Thank you, it was very useful.. Please keep making such videos You have a thousand likes My flash problem has been solved

Thank you. Just what I needed

Thank you, this is actually saved my SD! Worked perfectly..

You are the STAR... Thank you very much...👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Much thanks Brian. I have a couple that need to be fixed. 👍

Thank You, you saved my 64g flash drive. I really thought it was done/fried.

Thanks dude. Good explaining

thank you so much it was the only video that worked

Very helpful USB Drive Fix/Test video, thank you.

Thank you you saved my usb drive 😅 Thanks a lot!!

I solved this problem today without using cmd I just created the new simple volume from the disk management and it fixed