Reformat USB for Windows

I routinely have USB drives that have a Linux installers on them. Once the drives are setup this way, they can be reformatted as normal USB file storage drives using the following procedure:

  1. Plug in the USB drive.
  2. Right-click Start and select Terminal (Admin) or Windows PowerShell (Admin).
  3. Type:
diskpart
  1. List the disks:
list disk
  1. Identify the USB drive by size. For example, it may be Disk 2.
  2. Select the USB drive, replacing 2 with the correct disk number:
select disk 2
  1. Confirm you selected the right disk:
detail disk
  1. Erase the partition table:
clean
  1. Create one normal partition:
create partition primary
  1. Format it as exFAT:
format fs=exfat quick label=TRANSFER
  1. Assign a drive letter:
assign
  1. Exit DiskPart:
exit

The USB drive should now show up in File Explorer as a normal removable drive.