Here, the algorithm for low-level formatting will be described, followed by the creation of partitions on a flash drive.
First, what do I mean by low-level formatting. For this, first of all, overwriting all available user information without the possibility of recovery. Those. that part of the drive that is reserved for data will be "zeroed out". Standard Windows formatting does not do this, but only applies quick formatting, which consists only in repartitioning the drive.
I decided to use BOOTICE (v. 0.9.5.2011.0512 by Pauly) for this - one universal utility that allows you to do many wonderful things. freeware. Works on Windows. Although later I learned about the standard way to create partitions using DiskPart, now it is with the help of it that I recommend splitting a flash drive.
Of. website. (Yes, it's in Chinese). You can download or.
Briefly about BOOTICE tabs:
physical disk- Working with a physical disk.
Disk Image- Work with disk images in .IMA, .IMG and .VHD formats
BCDEdit- BCD editor Windows Vista/7/2008
Utilities- Utilities Start Menu Editor for GRUB4DOS and Disk Filling
command line- A little help on command line parameters

Why do you need low-level formatting at all, is it possible to do with standard Windows formatting?
Standard formatting does not delete all information on the flash drive, but only the first 512 bytes (1 sector), it is recommended to completely clear (zero) the flash drive, destroy all data on it, including boot code and partition information, and only then format it into the desired file system. Thus, we will delete unnecessary (extra) information left over from previous actions, exclude the possibility of unforeseen situations and errors the first 5000 sectors (why so many? but I don’t know, otbolds, with a margin). Note: BOOTICE does not yet know how to select a range of erased sectors.
Note 2: new BOOTICE learned to select the range of erased sectors.

Why do we need several sections on a flash drive?
Multi-partitioning provides the following benefits (taken from Wikipedia):

• one physical hard drive can store information in different file systems, or in the same file systems, but with different cluster sizes (for example, it is beneficial to store large files - for example, videos - separately from small ones, and set a larger cluster size for storing large files );
• you can separate user information from operating system files, separate programs from data;
• You can install multiple operating systems on one hard drive.
• manipulations on one file system do not affect other file systems.
• reducing the impact of fragmentation, because When dividing a hard disk into multiple partitions, each file can only be located within one partition.

How to clean a flash drive and split it into sections?

3 way. Using diskpart.
1. Run DiskPart from the command line.
2. We look at the disks with the command
3. We select our flash drive with the command

Where
# - number of your device, guided by size
4. Check if you have chosen correctly, an asterisk (*) should appear next to the selected device, again
5. Reset the device
6. We are waiting for a successful completion:

DiskPart: Disk cleanup completed successfully.

7. Exit DiskPart:

2 part. Creating multiple partitions on a flash drive.

1 way. Using BootICE.
1. Open BOOTICE if closed.
2. Select your drive in the "Destination Disk" line.

3. Click "Parts Manage". We see the following window:

4. Click "ReFormat USB disk". We see the following window, where we select "USB-HDD Mode (Multi Partitions)", we also specify "Align to 1 MB" to set the offset 2048 for the first partition relative to the beginning of the disk.

5. Click "Next". We set the required partition sizes and their file systems, as well as partition labels, for example like this:

6. Click OK. We agree with the warnings.
7. We see the successful completion of formatting:

8. Click OK. Let's see what happened:

9. Here you can also specify the active partition flag, or hide (make visible) the partition at the MBR level.
10. You can close BOOTICE.

2 way. Using diskpart.

Note: to create 2 or more partitions on a flash drive in this way, you need to replace the flash drive driver with the HDD driver. Cm.

In the latest big Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft has expanded the features " disk manager", which is designed to work with a hard drive, partitions, file system. The main difference is that you can now partition a flash drive into sections without third-party programs, and in this article we will analyze a good example.

Partition a USB flash drive using Disk Manager

To create partitions on a USB drive, make a backup copy of all contents. Next click Win+X and select the item Disk Management.

In the disk management window we see our hard drive disk 0 and flash drive disk 1. Right-click on the flash drive, in this case drive 1, and select Compress something m.

Specify the size for the second partition to be created on the flash drive.

In the Create Simple Volume Wizard, click next all the time. If, for example, you do not have a flash drive, but an external ssd or hdd, then select in the paragraph Format this volume as follows, file system NTFS. In the volume label, you can think of a name for your new partition.

USB hard drive or memory card as removable storage are the most common devices in people's daily life. They are widely used to save important data and files, such as system backups. One of their most significant advantages is mobility. Before splitting a flash drive into sections, you need to use special programs, after which people can easily and losslessly exchange files between computers and other devices.

Proper partitioning of a USB drive

Sometimes users need to partition a Kingston or Sandisk USB drive, such as creating an additional area or formatting individual partitions. The file system of the device shows RAW, which means that the partition on the flash drive is damaged or lost, so you need to create a new one first, and then format the damaged one. The question of how to partition a USB drive is not difficult, you can complete this task using both Diskpart and the free AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard manager or other similar programs.

First, before partitioning the flash drive, you need to connect the USB drive to the PC and make sure that it is detected by Windows. Since USBs are connected to computers with different operating systems, sometimes the drive is not recognized. In addition, the USB may become inaccessible due to the RAW file system, and Windows will ask you to format it first. In this situation, the user should consider modifying the file system of the external drive.

Partition Formatting

Sometimes you need to change the system when the scopes have already been created. Formatting results in data loss, so the user needs to move important files to a safe place in advance to avoid data loss. You can partition a flash drive in Windows 7, but if the Windows Was notable the Format error appears, it's better to use the MiniTool wizard.

Process algorithm:

1. Select the USB area and "Format Partition" on the action bar.
2. Expand the file system list and select the one you want before clicking OK.
3. When the main interface reappears, click "Apply" on the toolbar.
4. Sometimes you need to convert a FAT/FAT32 partition to NTFS to save individual files larger than 4GB. In this case, Windows reports that "the file is too large for the target file system."
5. The MiniTool Partition Wizard will help you convert without losing data.
6. You need to select the FAT/FAT32 partition on the USB drive and "Convert FAT to NTFS" from the action bar, and then click the "Start" button in the pop-up window.
7. Also, sometimes you need to use the PS3/PS4 storage to play games that don't support NTFS. In this case, you need to convert the NTFS partition to FAT32.

Similarly, MiniTool Partition Wizard offers a way to convert NTFS back to FAT32 without data loss.

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Manager

MiniTool Partition is one of the best disk partition software that is not only easy to use but also has many features. It can create, resize, merge, split, delete, format USB, copy partition, erase and more. It has a clear interface and a convenient wizard that will help the user to easily complete the task. Before splitting a flash drive into two partitions:

1. Run the MiniTool wizard to open the main interface.
2. In the disk map area, select the unallocated space on the drive and "Create Partition" on the action bar.
3. In a new window, configure the label, type, drive letter, file system, cluster.
4. Adjust the partition size by moving the slider or entering a number before clicking OK.
5. Click "Apply" to save this change.

Windows utility management

It is possible to partition the USB using the built-in Windows utilities. Before breaking the flash drive, in the "Disk Management" tab, you need to run diskmgmt.msc to get the main utility window. You can also click on PC, select "Disk Management" to access this interface.

Section algorithm:

1. Click on the unallocated space of the drive.
2. Select "New Simple Volume" from the context menu.
3. Follow the wizard to complete the process by defining the volume size, drive letter, file system, allocation units, and volume label yourself.
4. Enter List disk in CMD.
5. Confirm each of them with the Enter key.
6. Select drive n (n should be replaced with the exact drive number of the USB drive).
7. Create Primary Partition Size = n (Note that n represents volume size and unit is MB).
8. quick format.
9. Exit (exit diskpart).
10. Exit (CMD exit).

Create Multiple Storage Areas

Since Windows 10 Version 1703 supports multiple partitions on removable drives, it is possible to create them on a USB drive. MiniTool Partition Wizard Free also offers a similar partitioning feature. Moreover, this flexible manager offers more solutions.

Detailed steps are shown below:

1. Split flash drive into 2 partitions, works for FAT and NTFS.
2. Select the partition of the USB drive and "Partition" on the action bar.
3. In the Split Partition window, you can see that the MiniTool Partition Wizard automatically divides the partition into two parts and determines their size.
4. You can move the slider left/right to set the size yourself.
5. After that, press the "OK" button.
6. Click "Apply" on the toolbar and confirm the operation.
7. Repeat the above steps before splitting the flash drive into multiple partitions.
8. Resize and Create - Works for FAT and NTFS partitions.

Diskpart Disk Helper

Diskpart opens somewhat fine for different OSes. For Windows 10, open by pressing the Windows key and R (simultaneously), then enter diskpart in the line in the pop-up window and press Enter. For Windows 7 and XP, opening is done by pressing Windows, then "Command Prompt" and "Run as administrator" are selected. For Windows 8 - Windows + X (at the same time) and select "Command Prompt" (Admin). Before partitioning the flash drive, you need to execute the command line by pressing the Enter key after each transition.

1. Enter "list of disks".
2. Then determine which is the USB key.
3. Enter select disk * (* stands for USB key) -> enter clean -> list part. Next, "create a primary partition" -> list part, and then enter select part 1 -> active -> enter format fs = fat32 label = "Tabernus".
4. The process may take some time.

All steps in Diskpart are irreversible. USB keys have been found to have different partition table settings, some USB software will not work. You can use Windows Diskpart to reformat your USB key and repartition it:

1. Open command window (cmd).
2. Enter diskpart.
3. Enter the selected drive x, where x is the USB key.
4. Enter the format fs=fat32 label=Tabernus (the label is optional - the USB key is labeled as Tabernus in Explorer, etc.)
5. The process may take a while, but the USB is now working to erase the Tabernus USB.

AOMEI Partition Assistant Manager

A powerful helper in case the USB partition is damaged. Supports multiple areas on removable media such as USB in order to divide it into multiple parts.

Procedure:

1. Format a drive that doesn't work on the command line.
2. Make a bootable USB.
3. Partitioning a usb flash drive. This free tool allows you to partition to NTFS or FAT32 on Windows 10/8/7/XP.
4. Download AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Free Version.
5. When finished, you need to reboot the USB drive.

It's important to know that Windows only recognizes the first primary partition on a removable device. Therefore, after this operation, the second partition will not have a drive letter and is displayed in Windows Explorer. It is possible to keep two partitions on other operating systems such as Linux.

Partitioning a USB hard drive with AOMEI Assistant:

1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant.
2. Right-click on the USB, select "Create Partition".
3. You can click on the drive and select "Create Partition" in the left pane.
4. Specify the size and drive letter for the new partition.
5. Click "Apply".

Creators Update for Windows 10

Splitting a flash drive into sections with the Creators Update program is not difficult. The only condition is that the USB drive must be pre-formatted to NTFS. Before starting work, you must back up all data from the USB drive to another location to avoid loss.

Partition a flash drive in Windows 10:

1. Connect the drive to a PC running Windows 10 Creators Update (v1703) or higher.
2. Open PC.
3. Click on the USB you want to split and on "Properties".
4. Check if the drive is formatted in NTFS.
5. If it is formatted in FAT or FAT 32, click "Format". In the "File system" drop-down list, select "NTFS", "Start" and "OK".
6. Press the "Start" button on the taskbar. In the Disk Management window, press USB and select Reduce Volume.
7. This action will open the Shrink dialog.
8. If the flash drive is formatted in FAT, the option is not displayed.
9. In the "Enter the amount of space to reduce in MB" field, enter the size in MB. For example, on a 16 GB drive, if you want to create two 8 GB partitions, then shrink the drive by about 7000 MB.

Master EaseUS Partition

A third-party application is required to optimize USB hard drive performance. EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition is a free partition management software. Precise partitioning allows you to manage resizing, copying, merging, creating, deleting, and extending an NTFS system partition without reloading and copying a dynamic disk.

It works great with all Windows OS, easy to partition USB disk with very simple operations, while the data is completely protected in the process of partitioning USB hard disk. Apart from partition, this unique free manager has Partition Recovery Wizard to recover deleted or lost areas. Partitioning USB Disk:

1. Run the EaseUS partition software, select the unallocated area on the flash drive, right click and "Create Partition".
2. When the Create Partition window pops up, you can enter a label, select a drive letter, cluster and partition size, type (primary/logical), and file system from the drop-down menu.
3. When creating, you can change the size of the partition to the required value.
4. Click "OK" to confirm all operations. After that, a new partition will be successfully created on the drive.

GParted memory partition manager

GParted v0.23.0. runs entirely from a boot disk or USB, it has a complete user interface like a normal program. Editing the partition size is easy because you can choose the exact amount of free space before and after the partition. This uses either a text box or a sliding bar to visually see the increase or decrease in size. The partition can be formatted in any of several file system formats, some of which include EXT2/3/4, NTFS, FAT16/32, and XFS.

Changes made by GParted to disks are queued and then applied with a single click. Since it is outside the operating system, pending changes do not require a reboot, which means that other operations can be performed in parallel.

A slight inconvenience of the program is that it does not list all available partitions on one screen at the same time, like most other disk partitioning programs. The user must open each disc separately in the drop-down menu. GParted is about 300MB, which is much larger than most other free programs, so it may take a while to download.

Drive detection on PC

Even with the rise of cloud storage, the USB flash drive is still vital, especially as DVDs quietly disappear from the consumer market. Flash drives have a higher storage capacity than disks, copy data such as installation files faster, and have much faster access. In short, installing software the size of Windows 10 from USB is much faster than from DVD.

However, sometimes it happens that when manipulating a disk, it is not displayed in the "Explorer" of "Windows" and the question arises of whether the flash drive can be partitioned. In the case when the USB device partition is not displayed in the File Explorer, you need to connect the USB cable to the system and open Disk Management, which will place two partitions under one USB. Most likely, the second section will be RAW.

You need to right-click it and select "Format" from the context menu. Make sure the file system is NTFS. Once a partition is formatted, it will no longer appear as RAW space. To complete the process, you will need to click the mouse, select Change Drive Letter and Path in the context menu and designate the drive with a letter.

As USB drives get bigger and bigger, it's useful for users to know how to partition them into separate sectors. This will simplify the organization of files, allow you to boot from one partition and save the necessary tools on another. To create a partitioned disk, you will need proven programs and utilities.

Good day. Today I want to talk about a hot topic that concerns flash drives. Having dealt with the issue, how to break a flash drive I came to the conclusion that this could be useful to many, which means I need to write about it. You can divide a flash drive into parts for different purposes. The best, in my opinion, is to use one partition for the OS or LiveCD, and the other for storing various files. The most interesting thing is that there is more than one way to split a flash drive. For example, in the Windows 10 Creators Update, it is possible to do this, but this was not the case before. I will also talk about other methods.

How to partition a flash drive using Windows 10

Before describing the method, I want to say that in versions earlier than 1703 (Creators Update), you may not see the second section of the flash drive due to the features of the operating system, but this is just my opinion, especially since I have this version and everything works fine on it. As other users have said, there is no second partition on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.

Go to the "This PC" folder and right-click on the flash drive. Now we will format it to the NTFS file system. If there is data on it, then I recommend transferring them to a hard disk. If you do not want to do this, you can convert the flash drive to any file system without losing data.

We launch the PowerShell console, for this we enter the name of this tool in the search, click on it with the mouse and use run as administrator. I have the utility located in the Start menu if I press Win + X (or right-click on the Start menu) instead of the command line.

Enter the command to convert the flash drive:

convert E: /FS:NTFS

In this case, the letter (E:) indicates a flash drive, yours may be different. Be careful with this.

If you do not want to deal with entering commands through the command line or PowerShell, then you can format the drive as standard.

When the flash drive has the NTFS file system, go to the Disk Management utility, it is located in the Win + X menu.

The necessary window opens, where we right-click on the USB drive and select the "Compress Volume" item.

The next window opens. There, select the required amount of space that you will take from the flash drive. We press "Squeeze".

An unallocated partition appeared in the disk management window. Click on it with the mouse and select the option "Create a simple volume".

Okay, we've split the flash drive into two partitions. But, as I said before, all sections will display correctly in the Creators Update.

How to partition a flash drive using the command line

Here are some other ways that came up. Now I'll show you how to do it on the command line. True, the drive will lose files, so they need to be transferred to another drive.

Launch an elevated command prompt and enter the following commands:

• diskpart - run the Diskpart utility;
• list disk - display existing partitions;
• select disk 1 - select partition number 1, you may have a different one;
• clean - cleaning the flash drive;
• create partition primary size=5000 - divide the flash drive into a 5 GB partition;
• create partition primary - create a primary partition;
• format fs=fat32 quick - formatting in FAT32;
• assign letter=e - Assign a letter to the section.
  

Approximately the same can be done using third-party utilities, for example, AOMEI Partition Assistant.

How to partition a flash drive using WinSetupFromUSB?

The following method also erases files, be sure to save them to another drive. We launch the WinSetupFromUSB utility and make sure that the USB flash drive is selected, and not another drive.

Click on the "Bootice" button, after which the following window opens.

In the "Destination Disk" section, there should be a flash drive, not an HDD. Now click on the "Parts Manage" item.

We get into the window where we click on the "Active" button, so the flash drive will be able to be divided into sections. Now click on the "RePartitioning" item.

Next, put the checkbox opposite the "USB-HDD mode (Multi-Partitions)" section and select the USB flash drive in the drop-down menu. This option will allow you to reprogram the controller drivers so that the system considers it a hard drive. Now we press "OK".

We press OK.

To assemble a flash drive, click ReFormat USB Disk and select the same item Multi-Partitions.

For those sections where we set the volume, enter 0 and remove the marks. We press OK.

An unallocated section will appear in the window, about which there is no information. Then click on the "Format this part" option. The usual format window from Windows will open, where you do a quick format with the desired file system and label. Although in Windows 10 this action is not necessary, everything is done automatically, and also if you have the latest version of the utility.

You can make sure that the flash drive has acquired its original volume and will again be detected as a USB drive.

Dividing a flash drive into sections using BootIT

A simple utility that allows you to transfer our flash drive first to the HDD, and then do whatever you want with it. You can download from here.

If BootIT does not start in the usual way, then we use compatibility mode with Windows XP.

The utility is so simple that almost nothing needs to be done. You must select the desired device and click on the "Flip Removable Bit" button.

Then the program will say that the USB drive needs to be removed, and then reconnected.

To make sure that the flash drive has really become an HDD, go to the Disk Management utility and right-click on the flash drive. If the "Delete volume" option is active, then we did everything right and now we can divide the flash drive into sections.

So far, I have talked about the most effective ways. You can offer something of your own, and I, in turn, will try to find other ways. I hope this article will help you split the flash drive into sections.

At the moment, there is a lot of information on the net about how to partition a USB flash drive into partitions and so that, after all this, Windows can work normally with both partitions. For Linux users, there is no problem in this matter. They don't need anything special in order to share and enjoy all the partitions on a flash drive. But Windows is more conservative in this matter, since at one time it decided that removable flash drives can only have one active partition. That is, even if you divide the flash drive into two partitions using Linux, and then decide to use it in Windows, you will only be shown the first partition.

While searching for an answer to the question - how to make two active partitions visible in Windows - you may come across specific examples that only work on certain flash drives. Some flash drive manufacturers have made sure that they have a utility for qualitatively dividing a flash drive into sections. But what about those owners of flash drives, whose manufacturers did not even think about the need to create such a utility.

There is another option, which will be discussed in the next part of the article. The goal is to make Windows "see" the flash drive as a hard drive. It is clear that this method will be relevant only for the Windows in which the appropriate actions will be taken, but this is already not bad. To make the flash drive appear as a hard drive in other systems, you need to flash the controller, and as mentioned earlier and in the article on flash drive recovery, this will already require special utilities from flash drive manufacturers or utilities for flashing specific controllers.

Changes at the flash drive level

A more or less universal utility for putting the controller into HDD mode is BootIt, since it works with different controllers, but, unfortunately, not with all. The disadvantage of the program is that it only works correctly under Windows XP, but, fortunately, older versions of Windows have a feature that allows you to run programs in compatibility mode. This saved me when using the program in Windows 7. So, let's get started ...

In fact, the BootIt utility is quite primitive, so there should be no difficulties with it. But, since I started to describe, I will do it in more or less detail:

1 . First you need to run the program, and if you do it from under Windows 7, like me, then use the context menu that appears after right-clicking on the file and select the "Fix Compatibility Issues" item to start it:

2 . Next, use the recommended parameters and run the program.
3 . You don’t need to configure anything in the utility, you just need to select the flash drive that we want to put into HDD mode and click on the “Flip Removable Bit” button:

4 . After a short thought, the program will inform you that you need to remove the flash drive and insert it again for the changes to take effect.
5 . Here comes the moment of truth, since it is at this step that it becomes clear whether the program was able to transfer the controller of our flash drive to the mode we need. We go to "Disk Management" select our flash drive, right-click on it and if you have the item "Delete volume ..." is active, then everything is not in vain. You can delete the current partition and create as many as you need:

If it didn't help

Another option may be to search for a "native" flash drive utility, which will also, without much effort, allow you to partition your flash drive into sections. Well, if, suddenly, you do not find anything suitable, you can always ask for help in the comments, indicating the VID and PID of your controller.

What's next?

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