How do I correctly reformat the USB used to install Qubes in Windows?

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1

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. Literally just made this account to ask this question on this forum.

I searched this forum to see if this was already asked and searched online and couldn’t find an answer to this.

I have the Qubes ISO installed on a USB and now want to reuse this USB stick.

What is the correct way to reformat the USB that had Qubes installed on it using Windows?

So far I have tried opening cmd as admin > diskpart > list disk > select disk (x) > clean - doing this results in an error below and I get a popup telling me to insert a disk into the USB drive.

“DiskPart has encountered an error: Access is denied.
See the System Event Log for more information.”

Doing this got rid of the EFI parittion that was showing on disk management in Windows.

I have then tried to reformat the USB in disk management which is now showing the entire USB as unallocated.

Doing this it gives me “The volume was created successfully but it was not formatted. Retry the format using the format taks”.

I have also tried turning off quick format and same issue. I even tried following this guide https://www.instructables.com/How-to-reuse-revert-re-format-a-USB-flash-drive-fr/ and went to device manager and tried turning on performance mode on the USB and this didn’t help at all.

Does anyone have a guide on how to correctly reformat a USB with Qubes OS installed on it using rufus on Windows?

Any help would be greately appreciated!

2

The forum is about Qubes OS specifically, that’s likely why you didn’t find an answer to how to format / re-use an installation disc on Windows. But I think that with the context you give it’s fair to ask.

The following guide includes a section (Step 2) where the disc is entirely unallocated and what to do next. (Spoiler: there is more to do once you’ve created the volume, a partition needs to be created and formatted inside that volume, the guide explains how.) Does that help?

3

Thank you for your reply.

I am receiving the same error message when I go from unallocated to trying to setup partitioning The volume was created successfully but it was not formatted. Retry the format using the format taks”.

Trying to format the RAW parittion gives "The system cannot find the file specified "

Aritcle listed below suggested to do diskpart as admin in cmd and do a clean on the drive. Doing this gives me an error “DiskPart has encountered an error: Access is denied. See the System Event Log for more information.” and it brings a popup to insert a USB.