In Diskpart window, run commands listed below:
#How to format usb drive into multiples windows#
Press Windows + R, input “diskpart” and hit Enter key. Thus, you don’t need to suffer from data loss caused by partition deletion. It enables you to merge the existing partition on USB flash drive with unallocated space directly. Merge USB partitions using Diskpart ĭiskpart, another Windows built-in tool for disk and partition management.
#How to format usb drive into multiples Pc#
▪ If the OS that your PC is running is older than WindVersion, you can’t delete volume on USB flash drive as “Delete Volume” will be greyed out in Disk Management. ▪ If there are two partitions or multiple partitions, you need to delete all partitions one by one and then create a new partition. Finally, you can see that there is only one partition on the pen drive. Follow the wizard to complete the operation. Right-click it and choose “New Simple Volume”. Now, you can see the USB drive shows as an entire block of unallocated space. Confirm that there are no important files or that you have backed them up to another place. Then, you’ll be prompted that all data on the volume will be erased. Right-click the partition on the USB flash drive and choose “Delete Volume”. What you need to do is to delete the first partition and then create a new partition on the whole unallocated space. Since the Extend Volume option is greyed out, you can’t merge the existing partition with the unallocated space directly within Disk Management. I want to extend F with the unallocated space but “Extend Volume” is greyed out? Then how can I merge USB partition F with unallocated space” I go to Disk Management and find that it has two partitions: partition F and Unallocated. “I have a 64GB USB flash drive but it only shows 32GB on File Explorer. Click OK and it will be once again available in FreeNAS.Can’t merge the two partitions on USB drive
FreeNAS will stop a few seconds to reflect on the good it’s made in its life, then it will present you a dropdown from which you’ll be able to select your USB volume. A box will appear, select wether you have an encrypted volume or not, then click OK. Reconnecting the USB driveįor the thousandth time, go back to your trusty Storage tab, then click on the “Import Volume” button. Once the pool has been detached, you can disconnect the USB drive. I’m not sure that I have to point that out, but let’s do it anyway: do NOT select “Mark the disks as new ( destroy data)”. You will only see this button if you select the pool, while if you select the dataset with the same name you will get a different set of buttons. To do so, once again go to the Storage Tab, select your pool from the list (ColdStorage in this example), then click on the “Detach Volume” button. Once you’re done with it, you will want to disconnect your USB drive to store it somewhere. That would mean you’d be adding a single (USB!) hard drive striped to your main pool, and that drive would become the single point of failure for all the data in that pool.Īfter the disk has been initialized, you can start adding datasets, clone other ones, setup network sharing, whatever. I’ll call mine “ColdStorage” for the purpose of this tutorial.ĭo NOT select any “Volume to extend”. You will see your newly wiped disk there, give it a volume name, tick the “Encryption” checkbox if you’d like, then click on “Add Volume”. Head over to the Storage tab, click on the “Volume Manager” button. Once the wipe is completed, you can turn the disk into a Volume you can use on FreeNAS, just like your main one(s). Make sure you really select the correct drive, otherwise you might destroy all of your data.Ī Quick wipe is usually enough. That’s because you’re doing something potentially dangerous. To do so, connect your drives to FreeNAS, login to the webinterface, go to the Storage tab, click on “View Disks”, select the correct one from the list, then click on the “Wipe” button on the bottom of the screen.Įverything will turn red now. If your drives are not brand new, chances are you already have some data on them, so you’ll need to wipe them first. I have a few spare 2 TB drives that used to be in my homeserver, and I wanted to connect them to my FreeNAS every few weeks to store some backups on them, then disconnect them and put them in a drawer. First of all, a disclaimer: I use this setup just as a secondary backup, I do not recommend you rely on USB drives as storage media for your FreeNAS server.
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