windows 7 - How to clear any partitioning on an USB flash device on Win7 without admin rights?
2014-07
sherrellbc
I am in a bit of a bind. I need to use my USB device to create a live-usb in order to boot into either my Windows7 partition. However, I do not have access to a computer with admin rights in order to use the Disk Manager (diskpart) utility. The USB device apparently has partitions that I need to erase because I currently only have access to about 31MB of storage space.
What are my options? Are there any partitioning utilities that I may use that do not require installation or admin rights? I only need access to a mounted USB flash device, not the system's partitions.
arielnmz
Try the Disk Management Console (Right click on Computer → Manage).
But as far as I know, you can't have that level of access on a device without admin rights. By the way, I suggest you use a proper tool like gparted or similar; it will really come in handy if you do this regularly.
Arci
I have a flash drive which is given as a freebie. I don't know who manufactured it. It got infected by a virus. I am trying to reformat it but I am always receiving a "Windows was unable to complete the format" message. When I checked its properties, the used space and free space is 0 bytes. On disk management, it says that the flash drive has raw file system with 8mb capacity. The status of the flash drive is "Healthy (Primary Partition)". However, the real capacity of the flash disk is 1gb.
How can I recover the missing space? I tried using diskpart to clean and delete the 8gb partition, then create a new partition hoping that it will fix the problem but to no avail. Until now, I also can't reformat the flash disk. I also tried using BootIce and Active KillDisk, but it also didn't fix the problem. On the other hand, SpaceSniper claims that the location of my flash drive is not a valid path. I also tried using Lexar but the drive letter of my usb won't even appear on its list. Meanwhile, HDD Low Level Format Tool says that my device cannot be accessed because it is smaller than 65535 sectors.
I am already out of options. How can I fix my flash disk? How can I format it and reclaim the missing space? (I am using Windows 7.)
The following are displayed when I used KillDisk:
Name: Generic Flash Disk 2.0
Version: 2.10
Mode LBA: Yes
Cylinders: 1
Tracks per Cylinder: 255
Sectors per Track: 63
Total Sectors: 16384
Bytes per Sector: 512
Total Size: 8.000 MB (8388608 bytes)
(What happened to the other space? Why only 8 bytes can be seen?)