Fix Unallocated Space error on USB drive or SD card in Windows 10

If you are facing the problem that your SD card or USB drive suddenly appears as unallocated in disk management or even stops working on your Windows 10 PC, then this article is intended to help you. In this article, we will identify the possible causes of this error and also present the solutions that you can try to correct the error of unallocated space on your USB drive or SD card.

Unallocated space is an error that occurs due to improper deletion of files and virus attacks. For example, you may accidentally have deleted the partition on the USB or SD card or some malicious program does it for you. Unallocated space can also occur after trying to burn a system to the USB drive. Some operating systems, such as Chrome OS and Linux, will change the partition system of your removable device, so there will be little free space on your USB drive. Improper use of certain third party software or unsuccessful formatting may also result in an inaccessible part on your USB stick or SD card, which is indicated as unallocated space.

Unallocated space error on USB drive or SD card

If you are faced with Unallocated space on USB stick or SD card problem, you can try our recommended solutions below in no particular order and see if it helps to fix the problem.

1. Use disk management
2. Use the HPUSBDisk tool
3. Using DiskPart

Let us examine the description of the process involved in relation to each of the solutions listed.

1]Use disk management

To use disk management to resolve the Unallocated space on USB stick or SD card error, do the following:

• Press Windows key + X to open the Power User menu.
• Press K on the keyboard to open disk management.
• On the center screen of the window, locate your USB drive. It should be Disc 1.
• If your USB stick displays a black ribbon at the top, right click on it and select New simple volume.
• Follow the on-screen instructions to finalize the process.

Then check if the problem is resolved. Otherwise, go to the next solution.

2]Use the HPUSBDisk tool

Using disk management as described above may not work for each corrupted USB drive. In this case, you should try to format it with HPUSBDisk tool. It is a very powerful tool to repair corrupted USB sticks.

To use this tool to try to correct the Unallocated space on USB stick or SD card error, do the following:

• Download it HP USB disk formatting tool.
• Right click on the downloaded tool and select Execute as administrator.
• Select your USB or SD card and click on Start.

If the operation ends and the error is still not resolved, try the next solution.

3]Using DiskPart

To use DiskPart to recover the Unallocated space on USB stick or SD card, proceed as follows:

Before you start, back up the data as incorrect operations with DiskPart may result in permanent data loss.

• Connect the USB stick or SD card with which you are having the problem to your computer.
• Press Windows key + R.
• In the Run dialog box, type diskpart and press the CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER key combination to open DiskPart in elevated command / administrator mode.
• Now. type list disc and hit enter.
• Then enter Select disk 1 (this number must belong to your disk) and press Enter.
• Then enter clean and press Enter to delete all volumes and partitions on the selected disk, which is the USB drive or SD card.
• Type now create primary partition and press Enter to create a primary partition.

If you want to create multiple partitions on the USB drive, you can specify the size of the partition by referring to the following syntax:

create partition primary [size=n]

For example, to create a 3000MB partition, run the command below:

create partition primary size=3000

Once you have created the partition, you can easily format the unallocated space on the USB drive or SD card.

Once finished, you can check if the problem is resolved.

I hope this helps you!