How to Restore USB Drive Back to Full Capacity in Windows 10, 8, 7?

Why USB drive not showing full capacity?

There are several causes making a USB drive not showing full capacity. Here we list common reasons why storage space is missing to help you to find a way to restore USB drive back to full capacity in Windows 10, 8, 7.

● Some space is unallocated. Usually, a USB drive comes with a partition for storing data. If there are some unallocated space that is not assigned to any partition, it would be unused and invisible in Disk Management or File Explorer.
● The USB drive was bootable Windows tool. Sometimes you may need to create a Windows creation tool or recovery disk, and the process might change it to 32GB, 64GB or other sizes.
● The USB was formatted to FAT32. FAT32 files system supports 32GB partition at most. So if your USB drive is using FAT32 file system larger than 32GB, you need to change it to another file system.

How to restore USB drive back to full capacity in Windows 10, 8, 7?

Here we will show you 3 methods of restoring USB drive to full space in Windows. The first 2 ways are formatting the USB drive, which deletes data on it, so before proceeding, please back up the USB drive.

Method 1. Restore USB drive to full capacity with CMD command

Step 1. Press “Win + R” to open Run box. Then type “cmd” and press Enter to launch Command Prompt.

Step 2. Once Command Prompt is opened, type “diskpart” and press “Enter”.

Step 3. On the diskpart utility, and type the following commands and press Enter to execute them.

● list disk
● select disk number (select the disk number of your USB drive)
● clean
● create partition primary
● format fs=ntfs quick (you can change ntfs with other file systems)

Then the USB drive will be formatted. When the process is completed, type “exit” to leave diskpart. And you can open File Explorer to see if the USB drive capacity is restored.

Method 2. Format USB to full capacity with GUI disk manager

If you are not good at CMD command, you can turn to a powerful disk manager-AOEMI Partition Assistant Standard. It is a user-friendly software. you can easily format a USB drive, SD card, hard drive, as well as other storage device to full storage. And it supports FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, and Ext2, Ext3, Ext4 in Windows 10, 8, 7.

Step 1. Download, install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant, and right-click on the partition on your USB drive. Then choose “Format Partition”.

Step 2. Choose a proper file system for your USB drive, and click “OK”.

✍Note: If your USB is larger than 32GB, you can format it to exFAT and NTFS, which support very larger partition size than FAT32.

Step 3. Click “Apply” and “Proceed” on the main interface to commit the operation.

Method 3. Add unallocated space to USB partition

You can view the USB drive information on the main interface of AOMEI Partition Assistant. If the missing space is unallocated space, this disk manager also allows you to add it to USB partition.

Step 1. On the AOMEI Partition Assistant, right-click on the USB partition, and choose “Resize/Move Partition”.

Step 2. Drag the border of the partition, and click “OK”.

Step 3. You also need to hit “Apply” button to commit it.

Then the missing space will be available. If you need, AOMEI Partition Assistant is also able to create new partition from unallocated space.

Final words

This is all about how to restore USB drive back to full capacity in Windows 10, 8, 7. The 3 methods are effective ways to recover its capacity. However, for a few cases, your drive may get corrupted and sometimes the USB show no media, you might need to use AOMEI Partition Assistant to rebuild MBR or run chkdsk program.

Besides, you can upgrade to professional edition to have more amazing features including allocating free space from on partition to another, change USB serial number, etc.