No Usable Free Extend Could Be Found – What Should I Do?

Diskpart failed to create primary partition

“Hello, guys. I have a 32GB SD card. Now I want to create second partition on SD card with the unallocated space on it. But I find that the option of New Simple Volume grayed out. Then I try to create partition via Diskpart utility, only getting an error message as follows:

“No usable free extent could be found. It may be that there is insufficient free space tocreate a partition at the specified size and offset. Specify different size and offset values or don't specify either to create the maximum sized partition. It may be that the disk is partitioned using the MBR disk partitioning format and the disk contains either 4 primary partitions, (no more partitions may be created), or 3 primary partitions and one extended partition, (only logical drives may be created).

But there is 16GB unallocated space on the USB flash drive. I don’t know what happens and is there anyone who can help me?”

Two helpful ways when Diskpart cannot create primary partition on USB

Diskpart, a Windows built-in tool, can help you to create/delete/format partition on disk. However, you can encounter the error – No usable free extent could be found when you use Diskpart to create partition primary on USB flash drive, SD card that already has one or more partitions. 

Here offers you two ways for you to choose. If you really need to create the second partition primary on a removable disk like an SD card, the first way is for you; if you want to make full use of free space on SD card or USB flash drive in spite that there are one or two partitions, choose the second way.

Way 1. Turn to 3rd party format tool to create primary partition

When you try to create the second partition on a removable disk, here I recommend you a third party format tool – AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It allows you to create two or multiple partitions on SD card or USB flash drive stick without any effort. Free download, install, and run it. Then let’s see how it works:

Step 1. In the main interface, locate the USB flash drive, right-click the unallocated space after the first primary partition, and choose Create Partition.

Step 2. In this window, you can adjust partition size. Then, click OK button.

*For more settings like changing drive letter, choosing file system, you can click Advanced.

Step 3. Click Apply and Proceed to perform this operation.

Notes:

▪ AOMEI Partition Assistant is compatible with Windows 10/8.1/8/7, XP, and Vista.

▪ It enjoys many other features like disk copy, partition split, and so on.

Way 2. Clean the disk and create partition primary

When you just want to remove the unallocated space but don’t care about the number of partition, you can choose to clean the SD card or USB flash drive to delete the existing partitions on it and then create a new primary partition.

Warning: This way will delete all data on the SD card or USB flash drive, make a backup in advance if there are important files.

Detailed steps are given below:

1. Press Windows+R at the same time to open Run dialogue.

2. In the mini window, input diskpart and hit Enter.

3. Type the following commands and press Enter after every command.

▪ list disk

▪ select disk n, n refers t the number of the disk that you want to clean

▪ clean

▪ create partition primary

▪ format fs=ntfs quick, ntfs can be replaced with exfat or fat32.

▪ assign letter=f:

Then close this window. Enter Disk Management to check the status of your removable flash drive and you’ll find there is no unallocated space on it.

Now, surely you have realized how to do when you receive the error message – No usable free extent could be found.