How to delete or unpartition USB drive partitions on Windows 10/8/7?

Partition on USB  drives or Pen drives seems a little bit irrational to those who have never got such conditions on a USB drive. Because most of the time we only have a single primary partition on a USB drive, that’s why so many people might never have faced such kind of multi-partition problem on thumbnail drives. But recently, while creating a bootable USB drive using software called balenaEtcher, it created 5 partitions on my drive. After that, I was a little bit anxious that it might have corrupted the Pen drive. Because I was not able to format it directly from the My computer interface of the Windows. So, I used the Diskpart command tool and finally able to regress it to its original form. I mean successfully unpartitioned or deleted multiple partitions to make a primary partition on my pen drive.

So, the commands I had followed, I am going to mention in this article, in case somebody also suffering from such a problem and wants to restore the bootable USB/partitioned drive to its original state.

How to remove multiple partitions from a USB drive in Windows 10/8/7

1. To restore the USB drive to the original state, we need to run the command prompt under administrative rights.
2. Press the Windows Key + R key together to open the RUN box.
3. Type CMD in Run box.
4. Now press the Shift+Ctrl key and click on the Ok button of Run Box.
5. The command prompt will ask for permission to run under the administrative mode. Click on the Yes button.
6. When the Command Prompt got opened, type: DISKPART and press enter key.
7. As the Diskpart prompt appears, type another command List Disk. 
8. All the Disk that are present on your computer system including the USB drive will appear on the screen.
9. Now we need to select the USB drive. So, to select the USB drive type: Select Disk X, replace the X with the Disk number.
10. In this step, we will call all the multiple partitions of the USB drive to appear. The command for this is: list partition
11. All the partitions of the USB drive will appear.
12. Now select each partition one by one to delete. The command for this will be:
    • Select partition X, Replace X by the number of partition like 1, 2, 3…
13. After selecting the partition, execute the partition deletion command which is: delete partition
14. Repeat the same above two steps until all partitions are not removed.
15. If any of the partitions of the USB drive is protected then you get the message “Cannot delete a protected partition without the force protected parameter set“. In such a case, you need to perform the forceful partition deletion command.
    • The Command to remove or delete protected partition forcefully is: delete partition override
16. Once all multiple partitions got deleted, now its time to create a single primary partition using this command:
    • create partition primary
17. After creating primary partition type: Exit.
18. Go to My Computer and when you try to open the Pen drive, it will ask to format, just do that.
19. That’s all you have to do.

 Screenshots for Reference:

Press Windows + R keys from the keyboard. Then type CMD. After that again press Shift+Ctrl and click on the Ok button to run it under administrator privilege.

Type Diskpart

Then List Disk

Select Disk X   – Note: Replace X with disk serial no. See the screenshot.

Type List partition

Select partition X   Note: Replace X with partition serial number.

Execute delete command: delete partition

Once all partitions deleted, create a new primary one. The command is: create primary partition

The output of the Command performed by us while deleting multiple partitions of a USB drive to restore it to its original state.

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.112]
(c) 2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.17134.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DESKTOP-ALL3OPD

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 223 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 3726 GB 2500 MB
Disk 2 Online 186 GB 0 B
Disk 3 Online 14 GB 14 GB *

DISKPART> select disk 3

Disk 3 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Unknown 512 B 8 MB
Partition 2 Unknown 512 B 8 MB
Partition 3 Unknown 512 B 8 MB
Partition 4 Unknown 512 B 8 MB
Partition 5 System 32 MB 122 MB

DISKPART> select partition 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> delete partition

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 2 Unknown 512 B 8 MB
Partition 3 Unknown 512 B 8 MB
Partition 4 Unknown 512 B 8 MB
Partition 5 System 32 MB 122 MB

DISKPART> select partition 2

Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> delete parition

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART> select partition 3

Partition 3 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> delete partition

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART> select partition 4

Partition 4 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> delete partition

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART> select partition 5

Partition 5 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> delete partition

Virtual Disk Service error:
Cannot delete a protected partition without the force protected parameter set.

DISKPART> delete partition override

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 223 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 3726 GB 2500 MB
Disk 2 Online 186 GB 0 B
* Disk 3 Online 14 GB 14 GB *

DISKPART> select disk 3

Disk 3 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> create partition primary

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> exit

Graphically Delete the Partition:

Recommend to use the command prompt option because some time graphical disk management option does not work effectively.

Follow the steps to delete USB drive partitions:

NOTE: Make sure the USB pen drive is plugged in before you start the below steps.

1. Press Win + R to open the Run command
2. Type, “compmgmt.msc” and hit Enter or click the OK button
3. This command will open Computer Management for you
4. From the left pane, under Storage, click on “Disk Management”
5. Now, Probably Disk 1 is your Removable drive (pen drive), as mine
6. Right-click on each partition and select delete volume from the given options.

7. Once all pen drive partitions deleted, they will be unallocated at one partition

8. Now, right-click on the unallocated partition and select “New Simple Volume” to create a single pen drive partition.

If you face any problem while performing this tutorial please let us know, the comment section is all yours!

Other Useful Resources:

• How to encrypt pen drives, flash drives or external hard drives with a password
• How to recover data from a dead Hard Disk Drive
• Create, change & remove Password in Windows 7
• How to Reset Windows 10 Password without Admin Login
• Reset your Windows 10 local account password with out reset disk