Most of the issues with Windows have one good resolution – formatting the system drive and reinstalling Windows. Or then at times, we may want to simply erase all the files & folders on our Data Drives, eg. D drive, E drive, etc. For doing this, we simply right-click on the Drive in Windows File Explorer’s PC folder and select Format from the available context menu options. Or we could open Disk Management Utility and do it.

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However, formatting a hard disk might not always be the smoothest of processes. Many users have reported an acknowledged receiving an error message when trying to format the hard drive:

Windows cannot format this drive. Quit any disk utilities or other programs that are using this drive, and make sure that no window is displaying the contents of the drive. Then try formatting again.

Jun 11, 2018  I can't format a drive on windows 10 I've tried formatting multiple flash drives and had a 4 tb drive go work and say it needed to be formated. No matter what optionos or procedures I do I can't get a disk to format without failing on windows 10. Step 9: Open “This PC” (Windows 10) or “My Computer” (Windows Vista/XP), and refresh it 5 times without doing anything to your USB drive, and properly eject the flash drive. Step 10: Now plug your USB drive again into your computer and format it to exFAT instead of FAT32. Besides, Windows can't format a drive which is write-protected. When USB drive gets well connected to computer, you start to copy some documents to it, then it reports messages 'The disk is write protected. Remove the write protection or use another disk.' Hiya guys, I have 2 HDD's in my PC, one is a Windows 10 HDD and the other is just there for media files. I wanted to format my media drive, but it wont let me. It turns out when I installed Windows 10, it added the boot folders to the media HDD. I guess I need to somehow move these. Windows cannot format this drive. Quit any disk utilities or other programs that are using this drive, and make sure that no window is displaying the contents of the drive. Then try formatting again. If your USB drive can't be formatted properly and reports 'Windows was unable to complete the format', please do not abandon the drive before you have tried the solutions below to fix this issue. However, please note that all these solutions will not work if the USB drive is physically damaged.

Let us consider the two scenarios:

1. You wish to format the System Drive C: It’s obvious that it won’t happen. The system drive has to be formatted using external media or internal options but not when logged on to Windows.
2. You wish to format a Data drives like D:, E:, etc.: If you get this error in this scenario, you should close all your open applications and then try to format the drive. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always help.

Windows cannot format this drive, Quit any disk utilities or other programs that are using this drive

Let us troubleshoot the issue on a case by case basis:

You wish to format the system drive C & erase all data from your system

To do this, it is best you use the Windows installation media during Setup and select the Format option when you are asked. You will usually want to do this when you plan to clean install an operating system.

You wish to format the Data drives D:, E:, etc.

The ideal procedure to format any of these drives would be to right-click on the drive, click on Format and then start the formatting procedure. But since it is not working, we will try the following steps:

1] Force Format using Disk Management

Press Win + R to open the run window. Type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter. This opens the Disk Management Tool.

Right-click on the drive you wish to format and click on the option Format. The drive won’t format straight away but will give the following error message:

The volume (name of the drive) logical drive currently in use. To force the format of this volume click Yes.

Windows 3.1 was actually just an application that ran on DOS, and DOSBox is an emulator designed to run DOS and DOS applications. Windows 3.1 in DOSBox is an ideal combination for running old Windows 3.1-era applications. Install Windows 3.1. First, you’ll need to create a folder on your computer. Windows 3.1 download. How to Install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox, Set Up Drivers, and Play 16-bit Games. Install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox to run old 16-bit Windows games on 64-bit versions of Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and anywhere else DOSBox runs. This is particularly useful as only 32-bit versions of Windows.

It will format the drive forcefully and this could be verified by checking the space on the drive.

2] Use Diskpart

If this does not work for you, you may need to make use od the Diskpart command-line tool which ships with your Windows 10/8/7 OS.

To run this tool, open an elevated command prompt and run the following command one after the other:

Here you have to replace <no> with the number of the volume that you wish to format.

This will format the drive.

The optional switches you can use with the format command are:

• FS=<FS> – Specifies the type of file system. If no file system is given, the default file system is used.
• REVISION = <X.XX> – Specifies the file system revision (if applicable).
• RECOMMENDED – If specified, use the recommended file system and revision instead of the default if a recommendation exists.
• LABEL=<“label”> – Specifies the volume label.
• UNIT=<N> – Overrides the default allocation unit size. Default settings are strongly recommended for general use.
• QUICK – Performs a quick format.
• COMPRESS – NTFS only: Files created on the new volume will be compressed by default.
• OVERRIDE – Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened handles to the volume would no longer be valid.
• NOWAIT – Forces the command to return immediately while the format process is still in progress.
• NOERR – For scripting only. When an error is encountered, DiskPart continues to process commands as if the error did not occur.

Examples:

• FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL=”New Volume” QUICK COMPRESS
• FORMAT RECOMMENDED OVERRIDE

Hope this helps.

See this post if you receive Windows cannot be installed to this disk, The selected disk is of the GPT partition style error message.

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Formatting is the only solution left when you have tried all methods to fix the corrupt USB flash drive. Although it erases all your data present on the disk, but saves your USB drive and gives it a new life free from viruses, trojans and all other crappy stuffs. Now, if your USB is corrupted in a way that once you do a right click and format, it displays a message saying.

Windows was unable to complete the format

How to Format USB drive with CMD in Windows 10

Step 1: – First of all open run command box by searching it in windows search box.

Step 2: – Now, write diskpart and hit enter.

Windows Can't Format Drive In Windows 7

Step 3: – Once Diskpart is open. Follow the process given below by writing the commands, one by one.

Now, it will list Disk 0 and Disk 1 in your PC. Clearly Disk 0 is your hard disk and Disk 1 is the USB flash drive.

Now, write the commands given below One by One.

In the above command fat32 is chosen as file system, if you want to choose ntfs, you can choose that as well.

It will take time. Do not close the window before its completed.

Alternative Fix – windows 10 is Unable to Complete the Format Of USB

Windows Can T Format Drive Still In Use

1 – Press Windows key + R to Open RUN.

2 – Now, write compmgmt.msc in it and Press OK.

Windows Can't Format Drive Software

3 – Now, from the left side menu, just click on Storage -> Disk Management .

4 – Right Click on your Removable Disk in the right side.

5 – Click on New Simple Volume.

6 – The New Simple volume Wizard will pop up.

Windows Can't Format External Drive

7 – Just Go on and complete the process to finally complete the formatting process.

Windows 10 Install Can't Format Drive

Finally your disk formatting will get completed. Now, the message Windows was unable to complete the format will no longer appear.

Saurav is associated with IT industry and computers for more than a decade and is writing on The Geek Page on topics revolving on windows 10 and softwares.