How to Unpartition a USB Drive Quickly and Safely?

For some reason, some people want to unpartition their USB drivers but don’t know the steps. This post focuses on how to unpartition a USB drive, detailing the steps of unpartitioning a USB using Windows built-in tools and MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Unpartition a USB Drive

What does unpartitioning a USB drive mean? Unpartitioning a USB drive removes all partitions and makes the whole unallocated.

Well, how to unpartition a USB drive? On Windows 10, there are many ways to unpartition a USB drive. For example, you can unpartition a USB drive using Windows built-in tools like Disk Management or Diskpart. Alternatively, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard, a professional partition manager for Windows, to complete that.

But before you unpartition USB drive using these tools, one thing should not be neglected: back up important files on the USB drive. As to USB drive backup, you can refer to 2 Best USB Clone Tools Help to Clone USB Drive Without Data Loss.

After backing up your files on your USB drive, you can start to unpartition your USB drive.

Unpartition USB Drives Using Windows Built-in Tools

How to unpartition a USB drive via Disk Management and Diskpart? Connect your USB drive to your computer and then follow the tutorials below to unpartition it.

Unpartition a USB Dive via Disk Management

It is easy to unpartition a USB drive via Disk Management. However, the tool has one limitation: it cannot delete the second partition on the removable disk if your system is earlier than Windows 10 Version 1803 and the Delete Volume feature goes greyed out.

Therefore, if you just have one partition on your USB drive or use Windows 10 version 1803 or later, it is OK to unpartition a USB drive via Disk Management. If not, try using the other two tools.

Here is the tutorial on how to unpartition a flash drive via Disk Management. Follow it.

Step 1: Open Disk Management.

On Windows 10, there are many ways to open Disk Management. For example, you can press Windows + X and then choose the Disk Management option from the menu.

Step 2: Activate the Delete Volume feature of Disk Management.

Once the Disk Management window appears, locate your USB drive and right-click it. Then, choose the Delete Volume feature.

Step 3: Confirm that you want to delete the selected partition.

Once you see a window called Delete simple volume, click the Yes button.

Step 4: Repeat Step 2 – Step 3 to delete all partitions if you have more than one partitions on your USB drive.

After these steps, your USB drive becomes unallocated.

That’s all about how to unpartition a USB drive using Disk Management. Read on to see how to unpartition a flash drive using the other Windows built-in tool.

Unpartition a USB drive via Diskpart

Unlike Disk Management, Diskpart is a command-line disk partitioning utility that does not have a graphical user interface.

How to unpartition a USB drive through Diskpart? It can help you unpartition a USB drive in two ways. What are the two ways? They are detailed below.

Run the Diskpart Delete Partition Command

Step 1: Open diskpart.exe.

On Windows 10, type cmd in the Windows search bar and then hit the Enter
On the Command Prompt window, type diskpart and hit the Enter
On the user Account Control window, click the Yes

Step 2: Type the following commands and click the Enter key after each typing to unpartition on your USB drive.

list disk
select disk * (* refers to the disk number, like select disk 1)
list partition
select partition 1
delete partition

Note: If there is more than one partition on your USB drive, please proceed to run the commands: select partition * (* refers to the partition number, like select partition 2) and delete partition until your USB drive becomes unallocated.

After running the diskpart delete partition command, go to Disk Management where you will find that your USB drive has no partition and becomes unallocated.

However, as you see, it is not convenient to unpartition a USB drive that contains more than one partition using the diskpart delete command. To unpartition a flash drive, you can run the diskpart clean command. How to run the command to unpartition a USB drive? Read on.

Run the Diskpart Clean Command

It is easy to unpartition a USB drive by running the diskpart clean command because the command can remove all partitions on the targeted drive at once. Here is how to run the command:

Step 1: Open diskpart.exe.

Step 2: Type the following commands and click the Enter key after each typing to unpartition on your USB drive.

list disk
select disk * (* refers to the disk number, like select disk 1)
clean

Now go to Disk Management and you will find your USB drive becomes unallocated.

You might be interested in Recover Data Lost By DiskPart Clean – Complete Guide.

That’s all about how to unpartition a USB drive through the Windows built-in tools. Let’s proceed to see how to unpartition a USB drive through MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Unpartition USB Drives Using MiniTool Partition Wizard

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a professional partition manager for Windows computers. It is excellent at deleting partitions, formatting partitions, merging partitions, recovering lost data/partitions, cloning disks/partitions, etc.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

MiniTool Partition Wizard offers two features that can help you unpartition a flash drive. They are the Delete All Partitions feature and the Wipe Disk feature, both of which can remove all partitions on a drive and make the drive unallocated. But notice that wiping a disk makes data unrecoverable and wears out a disk.

How to unpartition a flash drive via the partition manager? The tutorials are displayed below.

Unpartition a USB Drive via Delete All Partitions

Here is the tutorial:

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to access its main interface.

Step 2: Locate your USB drive in the disk map, highlight it, and choose the Delete All Partitions feature from the left panel.

Note: You should highlight the disk instead of the partition on it. Otherwise, the Delete All Partitions feature is available.

Step 3: Click the Yes button on the small window to confirm to delete all partitions.

Step 4: Click the Apply button at the bottom left corner of the user interface.

Unpartition a USB Drive via Wipe Disk

Here is the tutorial:

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to access its main interface.

Step 2: Locate your USB drive in the disk map, highlight it, and choose the Wipe Disk feature from the left panel.

Step 3: Choose a wiping method and then click the OK button.

MiniTool Partition Wizard offers five wiping methods and they are: Full Sectors with Zero, Fill Sectors with One, Fill Sectors with Zero & One, DoD 5220.22-M (3 passes), and DoD 5220.28-STD (7 passes).

Step 4: Click the Apply button at the bottom left corner of the user interface.

That’s all about how to unpartition a flash drive using MiniTool Partition Wizard.

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Bonus: How to Create a Partition on a USB Drive

Unpartitioning a USB drive removes all partitions. If you want to continue to use your USB drive for storing files, you need to repartition it. The following shows how to create a partition quickly.

Here is the tutorial on creating a partition on a USB drive using MiniTool Partition Wizard.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to access its interface.

Step 2: Locate your USB drive in the disk map, highlight the unallocated space on the USB drive, and choose the Create Partition feature from the left panel.

Step 3: On the Create New Partition window, specify the following parameters and then click the OK button.

Partition Label (option)
Create As: choose Primary or Logical
Driver Letter (you must assign a drive letter to the partition to be created so that you can see it in File Explorer)
File System
Cluster Size (you can keep the Default option selected if you don’t have enough knowledge of it)
Size and location

Step 4: Click the Apply button to execute the pending task.

Once the partition is created, you can store files on your USB drive again.

Final Thoughts on Unpartitioning USB Drives

It is easy to unpartition a USB drive on Windows computers. You can either use the Windows built-in tools like Disk Management and Diskpart or try MiniTool Partition Wizard.

But note that unpartitioning a USB drive removes all partitions and data. Therefore, before unpartitioning your USB drive, do not forget to back up your important files on it.

Do you unpartition your USB drive successfully? If you have any problems with unpartitioning a USB drive, please feel free to tell us by leaving a comment; if you have any problems with MiniTool Partition Wizard, please contact us via [email protected].

How to Unpartition a USB Drive FAQ

How do I merge partitions on a USB drive?

To merge partitions on a USB drive effortlessly, you can follow the tutorial in the post: Merge 2 Partitions Without Losing Data in Windows 10/8/7.

How do I resize a USB drive?

You can utilize the Disk Management tool to resize a partition on a USB drive. Note the Extend Volume feature is available when there is unallocated space on the right of the partition you want to extend.

Open Disk Management.
Locate the partition to be resized, right-click it, and choose the Extend Volume feature or the Shrink Volume feature.
Follow the on-screen instructions to resize the partition.

Apart from using Disk Management, there are other ways to resize partitions on a USB drive effortlessly and these ways are detailed in How Do I Resize Partition with a Free Partition Resizer.

How do I fix my USB device not recognized?

There are many reasons why Windows cannot recognize a USB device. To get rid of this issue, you can refer to the post: Fix USB Flash Drive Not Recognized & Recover Data – How To Do.

How do I make my USB bootable normal?

There are many ways to make a bootable USB drive normal:

Open Disk Management and then activate the Delete Volume feature or the Format feature.
Open Diskpart.exe and run the delete partition command or the clean command.

About The Author

Vicky

Position: Columnist

Vicky is a website editor who has been writing tech articles since she was graduated from university. Most of her articles talk about Windows PC and hard disk issues. Some of her articles also touch on YouTube usage and issues. During her spare time, she likes to spend time reading, watching videos, and sitting on her Yoga mat to relax.