▷ How to fix windows error could not complete the format

Surely we all have one or more USB storage drives, and it is possible that the message " Windows could not complete the format " appears. This message usually appears frequently if our USB flash drive, portable hard disk or SD card finds any malfunction. Today we will see how to correctly format these drives when this error appears.

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The causes of this error are usually diverse, and it also usually occurs in versions of the operating system prior to Windows 10. But this is no exception. The solutions we will adopt here will be identical regardless of the Windows operating system.

Causes of the error “Windows could not complete the format”

Well, the causes that lead us to this error can be different, and in most cases they are not too serious and have an easy solution, knowing some tricks.

Windows occasional error due to old updates The drive is write protected The drive may have a virus inside The drive is physically damaged, its sectors or connection The USB port of the PC is not well connected and it loses the connection

As we see there are quite a few possibilities, from the mildest to the most serious. This is why we will see how to deal with each of these events.

Solution 1: Check the USB connector

The first thing we recommend doing is remove the storage drive from the connected USB port and put it in a different one. Sometimes from the continued use of the connector, the pins degrade and end up not making good contact.

This is an unusual occurrence, but it is worth trying this before trying other things that take longer.

It would be interesting to even try it on a different computer than the one we are using to download possible errors.

Solution 2: Update Windows 10 or remove an update

Another action we can take is to update the operating system. Sometimes it happens that the USB drivers give certain errors when the system is not updated.

This is simple, we just have to write in the start menu " update " and click on the result " check for updates ". This will open the Windows Update section of the Configuration and click on " Check for updates."

On the other hand, it is possible that just the opposite happens, that a recent update is giving problems in our system.

Visit this tutorial to learn how to uninstall a Windows update.

Solution 3: format USB that is write protected

It is not general, since currently few devices have a write protection system, or at least not manually as in the past. The thing is, this is one of the possible reasons why formatting using the normal method fails.

We have already discussed this issue in depth in other articles, where we propose different solutions for it.

Visit this tutorial to learn how to format a write protected hard drive.

Solution 4: Format USB manually with Hard Drive Manager

This solution has also been applied in the article linked in the previous section. But explicitly worth putting in because it also addresses other causes of a removable USB drive error.

Hard Drive Manager is a tool that has been implemented in Windows since its first versions and that is very useful for managing all of our hard drives. With it we can format, create partitions, extend them, assign letters, etc. But it is that we can also do these actions on both internal and external hard drives, and everything that has storage and is connected to our equipment.

We are going to right click on the start menu to display a menu with a gray background. In it, we are going to select the " Disk Management " option.

We will open a tool where we will see the list of hard drives of our team. We must look at the lower area, where their partitions, names and letters will also be represented together.

We locate our flash drive based on its label, size, or whatever. In our case it is clear that it is the 8 GB below.

We are going to click on the blue area with the right button to choose the " Format... " option.

Immediately a window will open where we will have to select parameters such as the file system, cluster size and format quickly.

We choose FAT32 if it is a flash drive or NFTS if it is a portable hard drive. The cluster size is left the same.

The option to format quickly should be turned off so that the formatting is complete and everything is physically removed, however, it will take considerably longer. Although we can test with a quick format to see if the problem is solved.

Solution 5: Format USB manually with Diskpart

Another very powerful Windows tool to detect and format all kinds of storage drives connected to our computer is Diskpart. Its use is quite simple and it is a life insurance where the rest fails. Of course, this tool will have to be used through commands from command prompt or from Windows PowerShell as administrator.

Well then, let's use PowerShell. Right-click again on the start menu and choose " Windows PowerShell (Administrator) ". Now we write the following command and press Enter.

diskpart

Now we must see what hard drives we have on our PC, because we need to select the number assigned to our USB drive in order to format it. We wrote:

list disk

We identify the USB drive by its size, we look closely at the number assigned to it in the first column and write:

select disk

In our case it would be "select disk 3".