I'm trying to format a generic 32GB USB flash drive as a non-bootable FAT32 drive using Rufus 4.15 on Windows 11 Pro. The drive appears normally as a roughly 29GB F: drive, but as soon as I click Start, Rufus immediately fails with error 0xC0030037, saying the device or network resource is no longer available. The USB then disappears completely from Rufus and Windows. DiskPart reports that the drive is not read-only, and using different USB ports makes no difference. Windows Explorer formatting also causes the same instant disconnect. Is there any way to repair or force-format the drive, or is this a hardware failure?
2 Answers
A USB drive vanishing from Windows the moment a write or format begins usually points to the flash drive’s internal controller failing, rather than a Rufus problem. You can confirm it with an elevated Command Prompt: run DiskPart, use list disk and select disk to identify the USB, then try clean followed by create partition primary and format fs=fat32 quick. Be extremely careful to select the correct disk.
Try formatting it from File Explorer after unplugging and reconnecting it. Testing another computer can also help rule out a USB-port or driver issue, although the fact that it fails across multiple ports is already a bad sign.
I tried formatting it through Windows Explorer too, but it disconnects as soon as formatting starts. Since the same thing happens with Rufus and DiskPart, I’m treating the drive as defective.
I tried DiskPart as suggested, and it failed immediately at the clean command. The drive disconnected at that point, so it looks like the hardware has failed.