How to create a single volume after clean disk using command prompt. This affects the entire disk. Works in systems running Windows Vista and later.
Table of Contents
Clean Disk Using Command Prompt Procedure
Warning: This will delete the MBR and remove everything!
- Open the command prompt from the Windows Recovery Environment
- Type
diskpart - Type
list disk - Type
select disk # - Type
clean - Type
convert dynamic - Type
create volume simple - Restart the computer
This will erase the partition, making the data very likely to be unrecoverable. It would be good practice to have a full image backup on another drive just in case.
Clean Disk Use Case
Having a clean drive to do an install has always been best practice. However, some storage systems, especially external storage, can face impeding issues like data corruption that a simple format just can fix.
This is where DiskPart comes in. It’s a powerful tool that has been around for a while. It enables you to effectively manage your storage devices. After you run this utility, you’ll end up with a clean storage device that’s ready to be formatted, assigned a drive letter, and labeled.
For a full list of DiskPart commands, see the linked Microsoft Docs article on the topic.
Conclusion
What has been your luck with DiskPart? Or have you not had to use it yet? You may find that there are issues if your external storage device is an SD card. If that’s the case, I recommend you use the SD Memory Card Formatter.
