How to “Clean” a Flash Drive, SD Card, or Internal Drive to Fix Partition and Capacity Problems | Dramel Notes

If your USB flash drive, SD card, or another drive isn’t working quite right, “cleaning” the drive and removing its partitions is one possible solution. This can fix problems with a drive that can’t be formatted or one that shows the wrong capacity.

This trick will also delete partitions that can’t be deleted with normal tools, like the graphical Disk Management disk-partitioning tool built into Windows. This process will completely erase the partition table from a disk, allowing you to set it back up again.

Warning: This process will completely wipe the entire disk you select, so be sure you back up any important files first. You should also be very careful to specify the correct disk, or you could accidentally wipe the wrong disk.

Launch a Command Prompt as Administrator

First, you’ll need to launch a Command Prompt window as administrator. On Windows 10 or 8.1, you can simply right-click the Start button (or press Windows Key + X) and select “Command Prompt (Admin)”.

On Windows 7, you’ll need to locate the “Command Prompt” shortcut in the Start menu — you can just search for “Command Prompt” in the Start menu. Right-click the Command Prompt shortcut and select “Run as Administrator.”

Use diskpart to Clean a Disk

We’ll be using the diskpart command to do this. Before continuing, be sure you’ve connected the USB flash drive, SD card, or whatever other drive you want to clean to your computer.

To launch the diskpart tool, type the following command into the Command Prompt window and press Enter:

diskpart

Have diskpart list the disks connected to the computer by typing the following command and pressing Enter:

list disk

Examine the output of the command to identify the number of the disk you want to clean. Be very careful here! If you select the wrong disk number, you’ll clean the wrong disk and you could lose important data.

In the screenshot below, we can see that “Disk 0” is 238 GB in size and “Disk 1” is 14 GB in size. We know that our particular USB drive is 14 GB in size. This tells us that Disk 1 is the USB drive connected to the computer, and Disk 0 is the computer’s internal system drive.

Once you know the disk number you want to select, type the following command, replacing # with the number of the disk you identified above.

Warning: Be very careful you specify the correct disk number! Enter the wrong disk number and you’ll end up blowing away everything on the wrong disk.

select disk #

The diskpart command has now selected the disk you specified. Any actions you perform will now be performed on the selected disk. To completely wipe the selected disk’s partition table, type the following command and press Enter.

Warning: This will erase all data on the selected disk! Be sure you have backups of the important data before continuing!

clean

You’ll see a “diskpart succeeded in cleaning the disk” if everything worked properly. You’re now done. Close the Command Prompt window to continue.

Partition and Format the Disk

You should now be able to initialize, partition, and format the disk like you normally would, using the graphical Disk Management tool built into Windows. You could also use the diskpart command to do this, but it’s probably easier to use the graphical interface.

To launch Disk Management on Windows 10 or 8.1, right-click the Start button and select “Disk Management”. On Windows 7, press Windows Key + R, type “diskmgmt.msc” into the Run dialog that appears, and press Enter.

You’ll see the disk now has no partitions. Right-click the unallocated space and select “New Simple Volume” to create a partition on the disk and format it with your desired file system. By default, Windows will create a single partition that spans the entire drive.

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If this method didn’t work — for example, if you successfully cleaned the drive but it didn’t appear to be functioning normally when you try to partition it, or if diskpart can’t see the disk or clean it properly — it’s possible the drive is simply physically damaged and is no longer working properly. But “cleaning” the drive with diskpart is a solution that can bring drives that would seem broken to most people back to life.

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What’s the Difference Between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS? | Dramel Notes

Whether you’re formatting an internal drive, external drive, USB flash drive, or SD card, Windows will give you the choice of NTFS, FAT32, and exFAT. The Format dialog in Windows doesn’t explain the difference, so we will.

FAT32 is an older file system that’s largely relegated to USB flash drives and other external drives. Windows uses NTFS for its system drive, and it’s also ideal for other internal drives. exFAT is a modern replacement for FAT32, and more devices support it than do NTFS — although it’s not as widespread as FAT32.

FAT32

FAT32 is the oldest file system here. It was introduced all the way back in Windows 95 to replace the older FAT16 file system.

This file system’s age has advantages and disadvantages. Because it’s so old, it’s the de-facto standard. Flash drives you purchase will often come formatted with FAT32 for maximum compatibility across not just modern computers, but other devices like game consoles and anything with a USB port.

Limitations come with that age, however. Individual files on a FAT32 drive can’t be over 4 GB in size — that’s the maximum. A FAT32 partition must also be less than 8 TB, which is less of a limitations — but still a noticeable one if you have a new, high-capacity mechanical drive.

While this file system is okay for USB flash drives and other external media, you won’t want to use this for an internal drive. It lacks the permissions and other security features built into the more modern NTFS file system. Modern versions of Windows can no longer be installed to FAT32, and must be installed onto drives formatted with NTFS.

Compatibility: Works with all versions of Windows, Mac, Linux, game consoles, and practically anything with a USB port.

Limits: 4 GB maximum file size, 8 TB maximum partition size.

Ideal Use: Use it on removable drives for maximum compatibility with the widest range of devices, assuming you don’t have any files 4 GB or larger in size.

NTFS

NTFS is the modern file system Windows likes to use. When you install Windows, it formats your system drive with the NTFS file system. NTFS has file size and partition size limits that are so theoretically huge you won’t run up against them. NTFS first appeared in consumer versions of Windows with Windows XP.

Aside from these limitations, NTFS is packed with other modern features. It supports file permissions for security, a change journal that can help quickly recover errors if your computer crashes, shadow copies for backups, encryption, disk quota limits, hard links, and other various features. Many of these are crucial for an operating system drive — especially file permissions.

Your Windows system partition must be NTFS. If you have a secondary drive alongside Windows and you plan on installing programs to it, you should probably go ahead and make it NTFS, too.

However, NTFS just isn’t as compatible with other operating systems. It’ll work with all recent versions of Windows — all the way back to Windows XP — but it has limited compatibility with other operating systems. By default, Mac OS X can only read NTFS drives, not write to them. Some Linux distributions may enable NTFS-writing support, but some may be read-only. None of Sony’s PlayStation consoles support NTFS. Even Microsoft’s own Xbox 360 can’t read NTFS drives, although the new Xbox One can. Other devices are even less likely to support NTFS.

Compatibility: Works with all versions of Windows, but read-only with Mac by default, and may be read-only by default with some Linux distributions. Other devices — with the exception of Microsoft’s Xbox One — probably won’t support NTFS.

Limits: No realistic file-size or partition size limits.

Ideal Use: Use it for your Windows system drive and other internal drives that will just be used with Windows.

exFAT

exFAT was introduced in 2006, and was added to older versions of Windows with updates to Windows XP and Windows Vista.

It’s a file system optimized for flash drives. It’s designed to be a lightweight file system like FAT32 without all NTFS’s extra features and overhead, but without FAT32’s limitations.

Like NTFS, exFAT has very large file size and partition size limits. This means you can store files that are larger than 4 GB apiece on a flash drive or SD card if it’s formatted with exFAT. exFAT is a strict upgrade over FAT32, and should be the best choice for external drives where you want a lightweight file system without FAT32’s file size limits.

exFAT is also more compatible than NTFS. While Mac OS X includes only read-only support for NTFS, Macs offer full read-write support for exFAT. exFAT drives can be accessed on Linux by installing the appropriate software.

While exFAT is compatible with Macs — and will be compatible with some devices that don’t support NTFS, like digital cameras — it still isn’t quite as compatible. Microsoft’s own Xbox 360 doesn’t support it, although the Xbox One does. The PlayStation 3 doesn’t support exFAT drives, although the PlayStation 4 reportedly does. Various other older devices may only support FAT32 instead of exFAT.

Compatibility: Works with all versions of Windows and modern versions of Mac OS X, but requires additional software on Linux. More devices support exFAT than support NTFS, but some — particularly older ones — may only support FAT32.

Limits: No realistic file-size or partition-size limits.

Ideal Use: Use it for USB flash drives and other external drives, especially if you need files of over 4 GB in size. Assuming every device you want to use the drive with supports exFAT, you should format your device with exFAT instead of FAT32.

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NTFS is ideal for internal drives, while exFAT is generally ideal for flash drives. However, you may sometimes need to format an external drive with FAT32 if exFAT isn’t supported on a device you need to use it with.

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How to Wipe Drives From Windows, Mac, or a Bootable Disk | Dramel Notes

Whether you’re letting go of a computer or disposing of a USB drive, it’s a good idea to wipe that drive if there was ever sensitive, unencrypted data on it. This will prevent someone from using deleted-file-recovery tools to recover sensitive data from that drive.

You should probably use full-disk-encryption instead of wiping disks afterward like this. This will protect your files, whether you’ve deleted them or not. Standard drive-wiping utilities also won’t work properly with SSDs and might reduce their performance, while encryption is guaranteed to work.

Windows 10 (and Windows 8)

Windows 10 offers a built-in way to wipe your system drive if you’re passing your computer onto someone else. Open the Settings app, navigate to Update & security > Recovery, click or tap the “Get started” button under Reset this PC, select “Remove everything,” and then select “Remove files and clean the drive”.

This feature was added in Windows 8, so you’ll see the same option when resetting your Windows 8 or 8.1 PC to its factory default settings.

Windows 10 also includes a built-in way to securely wipe a USB drive, SD card, or any other drive from within the operating system. This option was added to the format command in Windows 8, so it will also work on Windows 8 and 8.1.

To do this, launch a Command Prompt window as administrator by right-clicking the Start button and selecting “Command Prompt (Admin).” Type the following command into the window:

format x: /p:1

Replace “x:” with the drive letter of the drive you want to format, being very careful to select the correct drive or you’ll wipe another drive. The “/p” switch tells Windows how many passes to use. For example, “/p:1” will perform a single pass on the drive, overwriting every sector once. You could enter “/p:3” to perform three passes, and so on. Doing this to solid-state storage can decrease the life of your drive, so try not to use more passes than you really need. In theory, you should only need a single pass, but you might want to perform a few extra to be safe.

Windows 7 (and Computers Without Operating Systems)

Windows 7 doesn’t contain any integrated disk-wiping features. If you’re still using Windows 7, you can boot up your computer using DBAN (also known as Darik’s Boot and Nuke) and use it to wipe an internal drive. You can then reinstall Windows on that drive and get back to factory-default settings with a wiped drive, or just dispose of the drive after overwriting it with junk data — whatever you want to do.

DBAN is a bootable environment, so you can throw it on a USB drive or burn it to a disc and boot it up on a PC that doesn’t even have an operating system to ensure that PC’s drive is wiped.

To wipe a USB drive, SD card, or another drive, you can use a program like Eraser. You could also use this on Windows 10, 8.1, or 8 if you’d rather not use the format command in a terminal. With Eraser installed, you can right-click a drive in Windows Explorer, point to “Eraser,” and select “Erase” to erase it.

Mac OS X

The Disk Utility tool included with Mac OS X can securely wipe drives. It works for internal system drives, external USB hard drives, flash drives, SD cards, and whatever else you might want to securely wipe.

To use this tool from within Mac OS X to wipe an external drive, press Command + Space to open Spotlight search, type “Disk Utility,” and press Enter. Select the external drive, click the “Erase” button, click “Security Options,” and you can choose a number of times you want to overwrite it with junk data. Click the “Erase” button afterwards and Disk Utility will wipe the drive.

To erase your system drive, you’ll need to boot your Mac into recovery mode by restarting it and holding Command + R as it’s booting.

Launch the Disk Utility from recovery mode, select your system drive, and erase it with the same options you’d use above. You can then reinstall Mac OS X from recovery mode.

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This is possible on Linux, too. If you have a desktop Linux PC and want to wipe the entire thing, you can always just boot DBAN up and wipe it. But you can do the same with various commands, including the dd, shred, and wipe commands.

If you’re really worried about your data being recovered, you can inspect the drive with a deleted-file-recovery utility afterward and confirm it can’t find any data. Of course, this won’t be as effective as dedicated forensic utilities. But, if you’re that paranoid, you should probably just destroy the drive so no one can use it in the future. That’s how the military disposes of hard drives containing very sensitive data, for example.

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How to Install Apps to an SD Card (or Another Drive) on Windows 10 | Dramel Notes

Windows 10’s big November update added the ability to install apps from the Store onto an SD card, a USB drive, or another type of external or internal drive. This will be extremely useful on tablets and other devices with a small amount of storage. Just plug in an SD card and you can install apps to it.

This was possible in the initial version of Windows 8 with a geeky trick, but the feature was removed in Windows 8.1. Now, it’s back in Windows 10. You can also have Windows 10 save offline maps and other files to another drive, too.

Insert an SD Card

First, you’ll need to get an SD card that fits your device. Depending on your device, you may need a larger SD card or a smaller Micro SD card. (Micro SD cards are often sold with adapters that allow them to function as larger SD cards, too.)

If the SD card sticks out of the side of your laptop or tablet when you insert it, you may want to consider a “low-profile” Micro SD card. These are a bit shorter than standard SD cards, and they will sit flush with the edge of tablets and laptops where a standard-size SD card sticks out. This makes it more convenient to leave the SD card inserted for the permanent storage boost.

When buying an SD card, remember that it’s not all about price, either. Storage classes matter. You wouldn’t want to use the slowest class of SD card for an app, as that will just slow down the app unnecessarily.

Install New Apps to the SD Card (or Another Drive)

After you’ve inserted an SD card, USB drive, or another storage device, open the Settings app from your Start menu or Start screen.

Navigate to System > Storage in the Settings app. If you have an SD card inserted, you should see it in the list of drives at the top of the screen.

Scroll down and click or tap the “New apps will save to” option under Save locations. Select your SD card or another drive here and click “Apply”.

Other options on this screen allow you to select the drive where new documents, music, pictures, and videos are stored, too.

Now, go to the Windows Store and install an app like you normally would. Windows will install that app to the SD card, saving space on your internal drive and making it possible to install apps that just wouldn’t fit on the small internal storage included with many less-expensive Windows 10 tablets and laptops.

How to Move Installed Apps to the New Drive

Enable this setting and apps you install in the future will be stored on your SD card. However, apps you already have installed won’t be moved to the SD card.

While it may be possible to move apps to the SD card in a hacky, unsupported way, this method wouldn’t be reliable in the future. Instead, you should do what Microsoft recommends. Simply uninstall the app and it will be removed from your internal storage. Reinstall the app afterwards and Windows 10 will download it to your SD card and store it there.

To uninstall an app, locate it in your Start menu or Start screen and right-click it or long-press it. Select “Uninstall”.

Afterwards, go back to the Windows Store, search for that app, and install it normally. Your Windows 10 system will re-download it and place it on the SD card.

What if You Unplug the Drive?

Remove the SD card, USB drive, or another external drive with apps on it and the apps won’t function. You can click or tap the tile to launch the app, but nothing will happen. Reconnect the storage to the computer and everything will work normally again.

How to Undo This Change

If you want to stop using the external storage location in the future, return to the System > Storage screen in the Settings app and select “This PC” for “New apps installed to”. New apps will then install to your internal storage, as normal. However, apps you’ve installed to the SD card or another external drive won’t be migrated, so you’ll have to use the uninstall-and-reinstall trick if you want to move them.

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Traditional desktop programs can be installed the SD card or another drive in the usual way, of course. When installing an application like you normally would, select the SD card, USB drive, or other drive as its installation location in the installation wizard.

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How to Take Photos and Record Videos With Your Computer’s Webcam | Dramel Notes

 

Whether you have a laptop with an integrated camera or a webcam that plug in via USB, you can use the applications included modern operating systems to easily take photos and record videos. With Windows 10, this is now built into Windows and no longer requires third-party applications.

This sounds simple, but it’s actually been difficult in the past. To do this on Windows 7, you’ll need to either hunt down a third-party application or dig through your Start menu and look for a manufacturer-provided utility that will be different on different PCs.

Windows 10

Windows 10 includes a “Camera” app for this purpose. Tap the Windows key to open the Start menu, search for “Camera”, and launch it. You’ll also find it under the list of All Apps.

The camera app allows you to take photos and record videos. It also provides a timer feature and other options, although it’s still a fairly simple application.

Photos you take will be stored in the “Camera Roll” folder in your user account’s “Pictures” folder.

Windows 8 and 8.1

Windows 8 inludes a Camera app, too. Open the Start screen by tapping the Windows key and type “Camera” to search for it. Launch the Camera app and use it to record photos and take videos. It work similarly to Windows 10’s Camera app, and will save photos to the “Camera Roll” folder in your user account’s “Pictures” folder.

Windows 7

Windows 7 doesn’t provide a built-in way to do this. If you look through your Start menu, you might find some sort of webcam utility that came installed with your computer. That utility might provide a way to do this without installing any more software. Search for “webcam” or “camera” in your Start menu and you might find such a utility.

Mac OS X

You can do this with the “Photo Booth” application on a Mac. To open it, press Command+Space to open Spotlight search, type “Photo Booth”, and press Enter. You can also open Launchpad and click the “Photo Booth” icon, or open the Finder, click “Applications”, and double-click the “Photo Booth” application.

Use the icons at the bottom-left corner of photo booth to choose either a grid of four photo taken successively, a single photo, or a video. You can then click the red button in the middle of the Photo Booth window to take photos or record videos. The “Effects” button will let you apply filters to the photos and videos.

Photos you take will be stored in your Photo Booth Library, and you can also right-click (or Command-click) them in the Photo Booth window to export them and save them elsewhere.

Chrome OS

On a Chromebook, you’ll find a “Camera” app installed by default. Open the application launcher and search for “Camera” to find it. If you don’t see it, you can install it from the Chrome Web Store.

Like on other operating systems, the Camera app allows you to take photos and apply  filters to them. However, it doesn’t provide a way to record videos. Open the Chrome Web Store and look for another app if you want to record videos.

Photos are stored in the Camera app itself. You can open its gallery — click the button at the bottom-right corner of the Camera app — and you’ll be able to save photos from the gallery to your Chromebook’s local storage or your Google Drive account.

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Linux distributions also offer similar applications. For example, if you’re using the GNOME desktop, you may have the “Cheese” application installed. You can probably install this application from your Linux distribution’s package manager if you don’t. It provides an easy interface for taking photos and recording videos with your webcam.

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