USB Pen Drive Format and Partition Tools

Restore Your USB Key to it's original state

After having tooled around with a USB Linux version using your image overwritten or multi partitioned flash pen drive, you might find it necessary to revert it back to a single fat partition (restore the flash pen drive to it's original state) that can again be read by all computers. Windows users can follow the Windows instructions below to Restore a Flash Drive using the HP USB Format Tool. For those working from Linux this task can easily be accomplished via the Linux Flash Drive Restoration tutorial that follows.

Restoring your USB key to it's original state using Windows/Mac OS:

Windows and or Mac OS users could use the SD Formatter Tool to reformat and restore a USB Drive.

Or alternately, Windows users could use BOOTICE

    Download, extract, and run Pauly's BOOTICE Tool
    (1) Select your USB Flash Drive from the list,
    (2) Click Parts Manag

    (1) Click Repartitioning

    (1) Under Disk Mode, Choose USB-FDD, USB-HDD, or USB-ZIP mode I use USB-HDD as it works with every BIOS I use. (2) Click OK 

Restoring your USB key to it's original state using Linux:

A. First we need to delete the old partitions that remain on the USB key.

    Open a terminal and type sudo su
    Type fdisk -l and note your USB drive letter.
    Type fdisk /dev/sdx (replacing x with your drive letter)
    Type d to proceed to delete a partition
    Type 1 to select the 1st partition and press enter
    Type d to proceed to delete another partition (fdisk should automatically select the second partition)

B. Next we need to create the new partition.

    Type n to make a new partition
    Type p to make this partition primary and press enter
    Type 1 to make this the first partition and then press enter
    Press enter to accept the default first cylinder
    Press enter again to accept the default last cylinder
    Type w to write the new partition information to the USB key
    Type umount /dev/sdx1 (replacing x with your drive letter)

C. The last step is to create the fat filesystem.

    Type mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdx1 (replacing x with your USB key drive letter)

That's it, you should now have a restored USB key with a single fat 32 partition that can be read from any computer.