Confused about why Windows Explorer is displaying a UEFI NTFS partition when you plug in your USB drive? Don’t fret, this article will provide you with a straightforward guide on how to remove it.
If you’re using Rufus to make a Bootable USB drive for Windows on EFI GPT, you’ll find that your Flash Drive has two partitions – UEFI_NTFS being one of them.
The partition may puzzle you and Disk Management console on Windows 11, Windows 10, and other Windows don’t support removing it.
Don’t worry! follow the below steps that require using the command prompt and you’re good to go.
Delete UEFS NTFS Partition from the USB drive
- Connect the USB drive in question to your computer.
- Press the win key to open the Start menu
- Search for “cmd” and click “Run as administrator”
- Once the command prompt is open, type “diskpart” and press enter.
- Then, type list disk and press enter
- When you see a list of disks. type select disk which you have UEFI_parition avialable you’re trying to delete. For instance, in my case, I type “Select Disk 1”
- Run clear command
caution: If you select the wrong disk, you could end up deleting the entire hard drive partition, and your system won’t be able to boot up. That means you could lose all your valuable data. - Close the command prompt window and open Disk Management (type diskmgmt.msc in Run dialog and press enter)
- Right-click on the USB drive partition with unallocated space, and select “New Simple Volume.”
- Then, keep the default values and click Next.
- After that, choose a Drive letter and click Next
- Finally. select “Format this volume with the following settings” with “perform quick format enabled” and click Next
- Now Disk Management displays USB Drive is online with its full capacity
- Open File explorer, double click on USB
- Click Format disk
- Select the File System as either FAT32 or NTFS and click Start.
Once the formatting is complete, you’ll be able to use the USB drive without UEFI NTFS Partition.
Summary: This guide details the steps needed to get rid of the UEFI NTFS partition from a USB Drive on Windows. The steps work on Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1/8, and Windows 7 and older.
Has this guide helped you? Let us know in the comments below.
