USB stick has 3 partitions, cant merge

ShiWarrior · 4 Aug 2021 at 17:56

i have a USB stick that i cant seem to put right again

this is how it looks in the disk management software

tried deleting volumes, creating volumes, the middle 3Mb one , i cant even delete or anything

any ideas ?

EsaT · 4 Aug 2021 at 20:28

Could try Diskpart to clean partitions from that drive.
Also there are some USB formatting tools, like Rufus and then non-Microsoft partition managers.

https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/suppo...-a-drive-through-the-command-prompt-005929en/
https://www.diskpart.com/articles/free-usb-format-tool-7201.html
https://www.icare-recovery.com/howto/best-free-disk-formatting-software.html
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/usb-disk-storage-format-tool/

Murphy · 4 Aug 2021 at 23:55

Would help if you said why you can't delete them, like do you get any error message or maybe something in the event log.

Either way you could give the portable version of DiskGenius a go.

MagicBoy · 4 Aug 2021 at 23:59

As EsaT says - use diskpart to clean it.

Be extra careful, if you don't know what you're doing you could wipe something you need the data on.

ShiWarrior · 5 Aug 2021 at 12:28

Thanks
I'll have a look later

There's no data on them at all / don't need anything off it

As for why I can't delete them, it's all greyed out , can't select anything, the only thing I can do is delete the partition and create another, but I can't merge them so it's still in 3 parts

chroniclard · 5 Aug 2021 at 12:36

As above, diskpart will do it, google for instructions, quite easy.

Undesirable · 14 Aug 2021 at 10:49

ShiWarrior said:
Thanks
I'll have a look later

There's no data on them at all / don't need anything off it

He means data on other drives, because command line applications aren't quite as intuitive as ones with a GUI.

MagicBoy · 16 Aug 2021 at 12:56

Undesirable said:
He means data on other drives, because command line applications aren't quite as intuitive as ones with a GUI.

Yes, absolutely.

I've seen people at work accidentally nuke a hard drive by mistake using diskpart, when they meant to wipe a misbehaving USB flash drive...

ShiWarrior · 2 Nov 2021 at 12:39

i think its obvious which drive i want ?

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19042.964]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.964

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DESKTOP-DO881I4

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 1863 GB 1024 KB
Disk 1 No Media 0 B 0 B
Disk 2 No Media 0 B 0 B
Disk 3 No Media 0 B 0 B
Disk 4 Online 14 GB 14 GB

DISKPART>

Disk 4, hopefully if i do disk 4 it wont touch Disk 0 !! ?

MagicBoy · 2 Nov 2021 at 13:02

ShiWarrior said:
Disk 4, hopefully if i do disk 4 it wont touch Disk 0 !! ?

Yeah.

"Select disk 4"
then
"Clean"

Jobs a good'un.

Then it's back to factory fresh with nothing on it.

ShiWarrior · 2 Nov 2021 at 13:13

ill do that now
fingers crossed

Thanks all for the help
lets hope it works

ShiWarrior · 2 Nov 2021 at 13:37

Diskpart worked a treat

Thank you guys !!