[Help]Bootable USB Disc back to Normal USB

hey.

i just recently changed my usb into a bootable usb disc following the steps from the tutorial posted on this site.

im just wondering how i could change it back to a normal usb.?

Thanks.

Welcome aboard the Se7enforums! binny

Would this be a usb flash drive or pen drive or an external hard drive made bootable?

If you followed the guide for making up a usb key for example you would simply reformat the device by going into the Disk Management tool while it was plugged in. You would simply right click on the partition listing for it there and select the format option like you would for any hard drive internal or otherwise preferrably selecting NTFS.

Just format it, then it should work again

Plug it into your computer (I am assuming Windows 7) and wait for it to be recognized. Right click on the usb drive and select "Format". Formatting the usb drive will return it to its original size and use.

Is there some advantage in having a USB drive be non bootable?

The files necessary to make it bootable also take up memory space.

For most usb drives depending on type are used for storage or transferring files between two or more systems(laptop to desktop, desktop to laptop, etc.). Here usb flash drives serve another purpose being made bootable either for a usb key or as an alternative data recovery tool.

Try it with testdisk (google for it. Its a small program).

harpua said:

Is there some advantage in having a USB drive be non bootable?

Click to expand...

no there isnt, bootable just means partition is marked as active in MBR.

SoLoR said:

no there isnt, bootable just means partition is marked as active in MBR.

Click to expand...

That's what I thought. So mine will continue to remain bootable then.

Revert bootable usb drive back to normal

Folllow the below steps if you want to revert your usb device back to normal.

Run CMD as Administrator
Type DISKPART
List Disk
Select Disk 1 (if your usb drive mine was 1)
Create partition primary
active
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit
exit

Thanks ebinthms, that worked for me

When I try to enter the command Create partition primary I got Virtual Disk service Error : the operation is not supported on a non-empty removable disk

Welcome to Seven Forums.

Format your drive using HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool v2.2.3 HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool Download - Softpedia ( Right click on the HPUSBDisk.exe and run as administrator.)

make usb-drive unbootable

Start administrator's command prompt:

Open start menu
Type cmd
Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
Fire up the utility called diskpart. Literally, enter diskpart command.

DISKPART> prompt should appear.

Now in diskpart prompt type: LIST DISK and it will list all your Disks including your USB drive. Note the Disk number.

Type the SELECT DISK <num>, where <num> is your USB disk number. Just look for right capacity of the drive.

List all partitions on it: LIST PARTITION.

For every one of them type: SELECT PARTITION <num>, where <num> is the number of partition and DELETE PARTITION.

Now check there aren't any of partitions left: LIST PARTITION. If there aren't any create one partition:

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY - If it asks about size, just use the default value - it is the max capacity

FORMAT FS=FAT32 QUICK - I think USB flash drives use FAT32 filesystem by default. You could use NTFS instead too.

That's it!