USB hard drive or memory card as removable storage are the most common devices in people's daily life. They are widely used to save important data and files, such as system backups. One of their most significant advantages is mobility. Before partitioning a flash drive, you need to use special programs, after which people can easily and losslessly exchange files between computers and other devices.
Correct partitioning of a USB drive
Sometimes users need to partition a Kingston or Sandisk USB drive, such as creating an extra area or formatting individual partitions. The file system of the device shows RAW, which means that the partition on the flash drive is damaged or lost, so you need to create a new one first and then format the damaged one. The question of how to partition a USB drive is not difficult,You can complete this task using either Diskpart or the free AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Manager or other similar programs.
Before partitioning the flash drive, you need to connect the USB drive to the PC and make sure that it is detected by Windows. Since USBs are connected to computers with different operating systems, sometimes the drive is not recognized. In addition, the USB may become inaccessible due to the RAW file system, and Windows will ask you to format it first. In this situation, the user should consider modifying the file system of the external drive.
Format section
Sometimes you need to change the system when the areas have already been created. Formatting results in data loss, so the user needs to move important files to a safe place in advance to avoid data loss. You can partition a flash drive in Windows 7, but if you get the Windows Was notable the Format error, it's better to use the MiniTool wizard.
Process algorithm:
- Select USB area and "Format partition" on the action bar.
- Expand the file system list and select the one you need before clicking OK.
- When the main interface reappears, click "Apply" on the toolbar.
- Sometimes you need to convert a FAT / FAT32 partition to NTFS to save individual files larger than 4 GB. In this case, Windows reports that "the file is too large for the target file system".
- MiniTool MasterPartition Wizard will help you convert without losing data.
- You need to select the FAT/FAT32 partition on the USB drive and "Convert FAT to NTFS" from the action bar, then click the "Start" button in the pop-up window.
- Also, sometimes you need to use your PS3 / PS4 storage to play games that don't support NTFS. In this case, you need to convert the NTFS partition to FAT32.
Similarly, MiniTool Partition Wizard offers a way to convert NTFS back to FAT32 without data loss.
MiniTool Partition Wizard Free
MiniTool Partition is one of the best disk partition software that is not only easy to use but also has many features. It can create, resize, merge, split, delete, format USB, copy partition, erase and more. It has a clear interface and a convenient wizard that will help the user to easily complete the task. Before splitting the flash drive into two sections:
- Start the MiniTool wizard to open the main interface.
- In the disk map area, select the unallocated space on the drive and "Create Partition" on the action bar.
- Set label, type, drive letter, file system, cluster in a new window.
- Adjust the partition size by moving the slider or entering a number before clicking OK.
- Click Apply to save this change.
Windows utility management
You can share a USB using the built-in Windows utilities. Before breaking the flash drive, in the "Disk Management" tab, you need to run diskmgmt.msc to get the main utility window. You can also click on PC, select "Disk Management" to access this interface.
Section algorithm:
- Click on the unallocated space of the drive.
- Select "New Simple Volume" from the context menu.
- Follow the wizard to complete the process by manually specifying the volume size, drive letter, file system, allocation units, and volume label.
- In CMD enter commands: Diskpart, List disk.
- Confirm each one with the Enter key.
- Select drive n (n should be replaced with the exact drive number of the USB drive).
- Create basic partition size=n (note that n represents volume size and unit is MB).
- Format quick.
- Exit (exit diskpart).
- Exit (CMD exit).
Creating multiple drive areas
Since Windows 10 Version 1703 supports multiple partitions on removable drives, it is possible to create them on a USB drive. MiniTool Partition Wizard Free also offers a similar partitioning feature. Moreover, this flexible manager offers more solutions.
Detailed steps are shown below:
- Split flash drive into 2 partitions, works for FAT and NTFS.
- Select a partition of the USB drive and "Split" on the action bar.
- BIn the Split Partition window, you can see that the MiniTool Partition Wizard automatically divides the partition into two parts and determines their size.
- You can move the slider left/right to set the size yourself.
- After that press the OK button.
- Click "Apply" on the toolbar and confirm the operation.
- Repeat the above steps before splitting the flash drive into multiple partitions.
- Resizing and creating - works for FAT and NTFS partitions.
Diskpart Helper
Diskpart opens somewhat differently for different OSes. For Windows 10, open by pressing the Windows key and R (simultaneously), then enter diskpart in the line in the pop-up window and press Enter. For Windows 7 and XP, opening is done by pressing Windows, then "Command Prompt" and "Run as administrator" are selected. For Windows 8 - Windows + X (at the same time) and select "Command Prompt" (Admin). Before partitioning the flash drive, you need to execute the command line, for which you need to press the Enter key after each transition.
Next disk operations:
- Enter "disc list".
- Then determine which USB key is.
- Enter select disk(stands for USB key) -> enter clean -> list part. Next "create a primary partition" -> list part and then enter select part 1 -> active -> enter format fs=fat32 label='Tabernus'.
- The process may take some time.
All steps in Diskpart are irreversible. USB keys have been found to have different partition table settings, some USB software will not work. You can use Windows Diskpart to reformat your USB key and repartition it:
- Open command window (cmd).
- Enter diskpart.
- Enter the selected disk x, where x is the USB key.
- Enter format fs=fat32 label=Tabernus (label is optional - USB key is labeled as Tabernus in Explorer etc.)
- The process may take a while, but USB is now working to erase USB Tabernus.
AOMEI Partition Assistant Manager
A powerful helper when the USB partition is damaged. Supports multiple areas on removable media such as USB in order to divide it into multiple parts.
Procedure:
- Format a drive that doesn't work on the command line.
- Make bootable USB.
- Split usb flash drive into sections. This free tool allows you to partition to NTFS or FAT32 on Windows 10/8/7/XP.
- Download AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Free Version.
- When finished, you need to restart the USB stick.
It's important to know that Windows only recognizes the first primary partition on a removable device. Therefore, after this operation, the second partition will not have a drive letter and is displayed in Windows Explorer. You can save two partitions in other operating roomssystems such as Linux.
Split USB hard drive with AOMEI Assistant:
- Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant.
- Right click on USB, select "Create Partition".
- You can click on the drive and select "Create Partition" on the left panel.
- Specify the size and drive letter for the new partition.
- Press Apply.
Creators Update for Windows 10
Creating a flash drive into sections is easy with the Creators Update program. The only condition is that the USB drive must be pre-formatted to NTFS. Before starting work, you must back up all data from the USB drive to another location to avoid loss.
Partition a flash drive Windows 10:
- Connect the drive to a PC running Windows 10 Creators Update (v1703) or later.
- Open PC.
- Click on the USB to be partitioned and on "Properties".
- Check if the drive is formatted in NTFS.
- If it is formatted in FAT or FAT 32, click "Format". In the "File system" drop-down list, select "NTFS", "Start" and "OK".
- Press the "Start" button on the taskbar. In the Disk Management window, press USB and select Shrink Size.
- This action will open the Shrink dialog.
- If the flash drive is formatted in FAT, the parameter is not displayed.
- In the "Enter the amount of space to reduce in MB" field, enter the size in MB. For example, on a 16 GB drive, if neededcreate two 8 GB partitions and then shrink the disk by about 7000 MB.
Master EaseUS Partition
Requires a third-party application to optimize USB hard drive performance. EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition is a free partition management software. Precise partitioning allows you to manage resizing, copying, merging, creating, deleting, and extending an NTFS system partition without rebooting and copying a dynamic disk.
It works great with all Windows OS, easy to partition USB disk with very simple operations, and the data is completely protected in the process of partitioning USB hard disk. Apart from partition, this unique freeware manager has Partition Recovery Wizard to recover deleted or lost areas. Partitioning a USB disk:
- Run the EaseUS partition software, select the unallocated area on the flash drive, right click and "Create Partition".
- When the "Create Partition" window pops up, you can enter a label, select a drive letter, cluster and partition size, type (primary / logical) and file system in the drop-down menu.
- When creating, you can change the size of the partition to the required value.
- Press "OK" to confirm all operations. After that, a new partition will be successfully created on the drive.
GParted Partition Manager
GParted v0.23.0. works entirely from boot disk or USB,it has a complete user interface like a regular program. Editing the partition size is easy because you can choose the exact amount of free space before and after the partition. This uses either a text box or a sliding bar to visually see the increase or decrease in size. The partition can be formatted in any of several file system formats, some of which include EXT2/3/4, NTFS, FAT16/32, and XFS.
Changes made by GParted to disks are queued and then applied with one click. Since it is outside the operating system, pending changes do not require a reboot, which means you can run other operations in parallel.
A slight inconvenience of the program is that it does not list all available partitions on one screen at the same time, like most other disk partitioning programs. The user must open each disc separately in the drop-down menu. GParted is about 300MB, which is much larger than most other free programs, so it may take a while to download.
Drive detection on PC
Even with the rise of cloud storage, the USB flash drive is still vital, especially as DVDs quietly disappear from the consumer market. Flash drives have a higher storage capacity than disks, copy data such as installation files faster, and have much faster access. In short, installing software the size of Windows 10 from USB is much morefaster than DVD.
However, sometimes it happens that when manipulating a disk, it is not displayed in the "Explorer" of "Windows" and a question arises as to whether the flash drive can be divided into sections. In the case when the USB device partition is not displayed in the File Explorer, you need to connect the USB cable to the system and open Disk Management, which will place two partitions under one USB. Most likely, the second section will be RAW.
You need to right-click it and select the "Format" item in the context menu. Make sure the file system is NTFS. Once a partition is formatted, it will no longer appear as RAW space. To complete the process, you will need to click the mouse, select Change Drive Letter and Path in the context menu and designate the drive with a letter.
As USB drives become more and more numerous, it is useful for users to know how to partition them into separate sectors. This will simplify the organization of files, allow you to boot from one partition and save the necessary tools on another. To create a partitioned disk, you will need proven programs and utilities.
