❄️ The Complete Guide to Cleaning, Fixing, and Troubleshooting USB Drives

USB drives take a beating. We use them for Linux distros, Windows installers, boot tools, file transfers, and backups — and eventually they start acting up. Before you toss a drive in the trash, you should know that most USB problems can be fixed. With the right tools and a bit of know-how, you can clean, repair, and restore a surprising number of “dead” drives.

🧊 PART 1 — Cleaning & Formatting a USB Drive

🧼 1. Quick Format via File Explorer

Plug in your USB drive.
Open File Explorer → This PC.
Right-click the USB drive → Format.
Select FAT32 or exFAT, Quick Format checked.
Click Start.

🧠 Quick Format only deletes file references — data can still be recovered.

🔐 2. Full Format

Uncheck Quick Format
Click Start

🧠 Ideal before selling or disposing of a drive.

🖥️ How to Open Diskpart

Press Win + R
Type cmd
Press Enter
Type diskpart and press Enter

🧠 Diskpart has elevated privileges. Double-check the disk number before wiping anything.

🧨 3. Diskpart Wipe

list disk
select disk X
clean all
exit

🧠 “clean all” overwrites every sector — extremely secure and irreversible.

🧪 4. Third-Party Tools

CCleaner
Eraser
MiniTool Partition Wizard

🧊 PART 2 — Troubleshooting USB Drive Problems

❗ 1. USB Drive Not Detected

Try different ports
Try another PC
Check Disk Management

🔒 2. USB Drive Is Read-Only

diskpart
list disk
select disk X
attributes disk clear readonly
exit

🧨 3. USB Drive Won’t Format

diskpart
list disk
select disk X
clean
exit

🧱 4. USB Shows Wrong Size

diskpart
list disk
select disk X
clean
exit

🧪 5. Bad Sectors

chkdsk E: /f /r

🔥 6. Overheating or Disconnecting

Try different ports
Try a different PC
Use USB 2.0

🧊 When to Give Up on a USB Drive

If you’ve tried Diskpart, CHKDSK, full formats, multiple ports, and multiple PCs and the drive still shows 0 bytes, stays read-only, won’t clean, won’t format, or disconnects randomly, the controller is dead. At that point, the drive is finished.

Storage issues