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 initially appears as NO_LABEL (F:) with about 32GB capacity, but immediately after clicking Start, Rufus fails with error 0xC0030037, saying that the specified device is no longer available. The USB drive then disappears completely from Rufus and Windows. DiskPart reports that the drive is not read-only, and changing USB ports made no difference. Windows Explorer formatting also causes the same instant disconnect. Is this likely a hardware failure, or is there another way to force a clean format?
2 Answers
Flash drives can fail from wear, and inexpensive or counterfeit drives may also have a much smaller amount of real storage than advertised. A drive that disconnects under write or erase operations is not reliable for data, even if it occasionally reconnects. Avoid storing anything important on it and replace it.
The drive disappearing from Windows the moment an erase or format begins strongly points to the USB controller or flash memory failing, rather than a Rufus problem. You can confirm by opening an elevated Command Prompt and trying DiskPart: select the correct disk, run clean, then create a primary partition and format it. If it disconnects during clean, the hardware is effectively dead.
I tried DiskPart and it failed immediately at the clean command, after which the drive disconnected again. That confirms it’s a hardware failure, so I’m replacing it.