Again, be absolutely sure you have the right disk number. When you know the disk number you want to select, type the following command, replacing # with the number of the disk you identified above. It will show you the disk numbers along with the letters Windows has assigned it, making it easier to identify a particular disk. If you have any trouble identifying the correct disk number, you can also fire up the Disk Management tool. RELATED: How to Manage Partitions on Windows Without Downloading Any Other Software This tells us that Disk 1 is the USB drive connected to the computer, and Disk 0 is the computer’s internal system drive. We know that our particular USB drive is 14 GB in size. In the screenshot below, we can see that “Disk 0” is 238 GB in size and “Disk 1” is 14 GB in size. Be very careful here! If you select the wrong disk number, you’ll clean the wrong disk and you could lose important data. Next, have diskpart list the disks connected to the computer by typing the following command and then pressing Enter: list diskĮxamine the output of the command to identify the number of the disk you want to clean. Notice that the prompt changes to “DISKPART>” to indicate you’re now issuing commands to that tool. To launch the diskpart tool, type the following command at the Command Prompt and then press Enter: diskpart Before continuing, be sure you’ve connected the USB flash drive, SD card, or whatever other drive you want to clean. We’ll be using the diskpart command to clean the disk. On Windows 7, open the Start menu and search for “cmd.” Right-click the “Command Prompt” shortcut that appears and then choose “Run as Administrator.” RELATED: How to Put the Command Prompt Back on the Windows+X Power Users Menu You can do pretty much everything in PowerShell that you can do in Command Prompt-including the command we’re using in this article-plus a lot of other useful things. It’s very easy to switch back to showing the Command Prompt on the Power Users menu if you want, or you can give PowerShell a try.

Note: If you see PowerShell instead of Command Prompt on the Power Users menu, that’s a switch that came about with the Creators Update for Windows 10. On Windows 10 or 8.1, right-click the Start button (or press Windows Key + X) and select “Command Prompt (Admin).” Step One: Launch a Command Prompt as Administratorįirst, you’ll need to launch a Command Prompt window as administrator. You should also be very careful to specify the correct disk, or you could accidentally wipe the wrong one. Warning: This process completely wipes the entire disk you select, so be sure you back up any important files first.

How to clear a usb drive