Bad sector can affect the formatting operation as well as the data recovery operation. If a sector is damaged and cannot be read or write, it is called bad sector. Sectors are the smallest units for data storage. The Drive Has Bad Sectorsįiles stored on hard drives usually occupy many sectors. Remove the write protection or use another disk", then it is write protected indeed. If you see the following message: "The disk is write protected. How do you know it is write protected? Well, copy something to it.
Since formatting is a kind of writing operation, you need to remove the write protection before formatting it. Normally, five factors may lead to Windows was unable to complete the format: 1. In this way you may avoid the possibility of getting such error. Possible Reasons for Windows Was Unable to Format Pen Driveīefore we get to the solutions, we would like to tell the possible reasons for this error.
#UNABLE TO FORMAT FLASH DRIVE WINDOWS 10 HOW TO#
What's more, it tells how to recover data from USB drives that can’t be formatted.Īre you searching for why Windows could not format a partition during installation? Read " Windows could not format a partition on disk 0" to find the solution. Now, please focus on this post because it introduces the causes and step-by-step solutions to "Windows was unable to complete the format". If you encounter such a situation when formatting a USB flash drive, what should you do to format it? What caused these prompts? Then how about the data in it? And the author really needs help to be able to format it and make it normal to use. Thanks." By Allen420 from CCMįrom the simple description, we know the USB flash drive turns inaccessible and can't be formatted. How can I open it when I can't format it? Hope you'll help me. But when I format it, a pop up message appears saying "Windows was unable to complete the format". How can I open my flash drive when it says "You need to format the disk before you can use it". The volume does not contain a recognized file system."īut if we accept the suggestion, then we see "Windows was unable to complete the formatting" soon.Įxample "Hello, I'm new to these little things. Before we come across this error message, another phenomenon is that when we trying to open the removable disk, Windows tells that "you need to format the disk in drive N before you can use it, do you want to format it?"Īt this time if we ignore this message, then we see " is not accessible.
Windows was unable to complete the format always happen on USB flash drive or SD card. However, sometimes when we carry out formatting on a removable disk, Windows gives us a prompt saying " Windows was unable to complete the format", just as shown in the figure below. Windows Was Unable to Complete the Formatĭisk formatting is quite efficient in cleaning up disk partition files, and is usually adopted by us when we are going to emptying an internal hard drive or a removable disk.