How to Partition USB Drive in Windows 7/8/10 Simply?

Why we need to partition USB drive ?

USB hard drive or memory card, as the removable storage, is the most ordinary device in people’s daily life. They are widely used for storing important data and files, system backup images, for example. One of the most important advantages of them, when put into use is their portability. People can transfer data and files between computer and different removable storage devices conveniently and smoothly.

Sometimes, you do need to multi-partition a Kingston or SanDisk USB drive, such as creating different partitions to store different data or creating partitions on an unallocated USB. Therefore, the question of how to partition USB drive will come into your sight. Actually, you can perform this task using both Diskpart and free partition manager. Connect USB drive to your PC first and make sure it is detected by Windows.

How to partition USB drive using Diskpart?

The following are the detailed steps of using diskpart to partition a completely blank USB drive.

Firstly, open Diskpart by pressing Windows key and R key (same time), type in “diskpart” in the pop-up window and then hit Enter. For Windows 7 and XP, click on Windows icon, select “Command Prompt” & click “Run as Administrator”. For Windows 8, press Windows key and X key (same time), click “Command Prompt (Admin)”.

Note: To execute a command line, please press Enter key after each move.

Secondly, enter “list disk”. Then you will see all your disks (it is important you know which disk is the USB key).

Thirdly, enter “select disk X” (X stands for the USB key). Enter “create partition primary”-> “list part”, and then enter “select part 1”-> “active”-> enter “format fs=ntfs label=’Tabernus’ (label is optional).

The process may take some time. But what you must know is that using Diskpart to create partitions has an obvious disadvantage, that is, Diskpart does not support the creation of FAT32 partitions larger than 32G, which will cause a lot of headaches for many people. So to get better simple and easy-to-use solution, you’d better turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant for help. As a mighty and comprehensive partition manager, AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you under following cases:

● USB drive partition has been corrupted.
● Format USB hard drive or memory card that command line doesn’t work.
● Resetting and wiping out all existing data to become a blank USB drive.
● Make a bootable USB drive.
● Simply reset and reformat a USB drive.

This free tool allows you to partition USB flash drive to NTFS or FAT32 in Windows 10/8/7/XP. Download AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard free edition and have a try.

Partition USB drive with AOMEI Partition Assistant

Next, I will teach you to partition USB drive in Windows 10 step by step.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right-click the USB drive, select “Create Partition”. You can pitch on the USB drive and select “Create Partition” on the left panel, too.

Step 2. Specify the size and drive letter for the new partition. You can also edit partition label, file system under Advanced tab.

Step 3. Then you get a new partition G: in your USB drive. Click “Apply”.

Tips:

1. You can multi partition your USB drive via AOMEI Partition Assistant by repeating above steps.

2. Please note that Windows will recognize only the first primary partition on a removable device. Therefore, after this operation, the second partition will not have a drive letter and showing in Windows Explorer. However, you can keep two partitions be recognized in other operating systems like Linux.

Conclusion

Here are two ways to partition a USB drive in Windows. You can easily find out which one is simpler and more direct. Using AOMEI Partition Assistant, you can avoid the complicated instructions and restrictions of Diskpart to partition the USB drive. In addition to partitions, you can also use AOMEI Partition Assistant to merge partitions or convert NTFS to FAT32 without data loss. However, nothing will change unless you download it and start using it, so enjoy it. If you have more needs such as quick partitioning, migrating the operating system from GPT to GPT, etc., you can upgrade AOMEI Partition Assistant to the Professional version.