Remove protected partition from USB drive using diskpart

Removing protected partitions with diskpart and the override command
Patriek
08 October 2022:

You can't seem to remove a protected partition in Windows without resorting to the Command Line or Third Party utilities. And downloading a utility for something which you might do once every year is a bit overkill. Luckily using Diskpart is pretty straightforward.

This action might result in permanent data loss
Formatting a drive will destroy all data on it. Make sure you have full backups before attempting it. Also for drives you might accidentally format as a result of clumsy fingers.

  1. Open an elevated command prompt.
  2. Run diskpart
  3. list disk
  4. You can figure out which disk you need to format by checking the size of the drive. (If you are unsure which one it might be best to get some outside help)
  5. select disk X where X is the number from step 4
  6. list partition (there can be multiple partitions)
  7. select partition 0
  8. delete partition override
  9. select partition 1
  10. delete partition override
  11. create partition primary
  12. exit
  13. Exit Command Prompt (type exit or just close the window)

Once you are done you will need to format the partition by clicking on it and following the instructions on screen.

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