6 Ways to Fix “The Format Did Not Complete Successfully” Error [Partition Magic]

Format Disk Error Description

As is well known, Windows has a built-in tool called Disk Management which can be used to free manage your disk and partition. However, sometimes Windows Disk Management can't work in some cases, for example, Extend Volume is grayed out; Convert to MBR/GPT Disk only works after deleting all volumes; Windows fails to format and more.

Here a disk formatting error with DM will be introduced in detail. This format disk issue is always discussed in many forums like Reddit.

Probably Windows fails to format your disk with  "the format did not complete successfully" error in Windows 10/8/7, especially when you attempt to format a RAW partition of the removable drive like micro SD card, memory card, USB flash drive, pen drive, SSD or external hard drive storage device.

In Windows DM, "Virtual Disk Manager The format did not complete successfully" error message appears.

Or sometimes you want to format the exFAT partition in Windows DM, but still, receive such an format error.

If you are experiencing the issue, you may be curious why this issue happens to you? In general, there are some reasons leading to not completing disk formatting, such as virus infection, corrupted system files, bad blocks, and outdated BIOS or Windows Service Pack.

Well then, what should you do to fix it? Let's focus on the methods about the format disk error according to the specific causes.

Solved - The Format Did Not Complete Successfully

If your disk becomes raw and fails to be formatted with the error message, but there are some important data, firstly you had better recover data from the corrupted or damaged drive and then start to fix the issue following the methods below.

Recover Data at First

To do this work, you can ask MiniTool Partition Wizard for help. As a professional partition manager, it has a feature called Data Recovery, enabling you to recover files and folders from RAW volume easily. Its Pro Ultimate Edition or an advanced one can be used for file recovery, so get it from the following button now. It also allows you to recover data from the unallocated space. 

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Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard to its main interface and then right click on your target USB drive, SD card, pen drive or any removable drive to choose Data Recovery from the context menu.

Step 2: Then this tool will start to scan your removable drive. Please wait patiently.

Step 3: Find your needed files or folders and select all the items, and then click the Save button to recover them to the specified path or free space.

Related article: How To Recover Data From RAW File System, RAW Partition & RAW Drive

Solution 1: Remove Virus

To a large extent, unknown viruses may stop you formatting your removable drive, therefore, please download a piece of antivirus software or use Windows built-in antivirus software - Windows Defender to scan and kill those viruses firstly. Then try to format your disk with the Format feature of Windows built-in tool. If you are still unable to format micro SD card, SD card or USB key, try the next way.

Solution 2: Check Bad Sectors

Usually, a simple virus checking and killing may be not useful to fix "the format did not complete successfully micro SD" issue. Actually, the bad block is one of the main factors. Thus, it is necessary to do a disk surface test to identify whether there are some bad sectors or other physical defects.

In order to do this job, we advise you to adopt a professional tool. When searching for such a program on the internet, you will find it's variety. Which one to choose?

MiniTool Partition Wizard is worthy of being recommended to test disk bad sectors with Surface Test feature. If "the format did not complete successfully" issue appears on a micro SD card or a memory card, please use a card reader to connect it to your computer for disk checking.

This professional partition manager has multiple editions, thereinto, its Free Edition can be used here for personal users. Before you do, please download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, then install it on your computer and launch it.

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Then do as the following guidance shows:

Step 1: After double-clicking this free partition software, you will enter an interface. Click Launch Application to go to the main interface.

Step 2: Next select the micro SD card, memory stick or any removable device you want to identify, and click Surface Test from Check Disk menu. Or choose this feature from the context menu.

Step 3: Then click Start Now to begin this process. After a few minutes, all sectors of the target disk will be checked. From the figure, as follows, you know MiniTool Partition Wizard will mark Disk block without read error green and mark Read error in this block red.

After finishing this process, if no bad sectors are found, you can skip to solution 3. If there are, what should you do to shield these bad blocks to avoid experiencing "the format did not complete successfully RAW SD card" issue again?

Now, after shielding bad blocks, you can try to format your removable drive, then "the format did not complete successfully SD card" issue won't occur.

Solution 3: Use Diskpart to Complete Formatting

Apart from the above tools, there is another built-in tool called Command Prompt that enables you to format your SD card or USB drive. How to fix “the format did not complete successfully” by using command? Follow the guide now:

1. Open Command Prompt as administrator.
2. Finally, type FORMAT X: /FS:FAT32 /Q /V:PenDrive (X refers to the drive letter of your drive.). And wait for the formatting process to be finished. 

This way comes from a Microsoft forum, check it to learn much.

Solution 4: Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to Format

If you fail to format your USB key or SD card with last method, "the format did not complete successfully RAW USB" issue is still not solved. Now try to use a professional formatting tool. Here MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition is also useful for disk formatting.

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How to perform the formatting operation with this free partition manager? Look at the step-by-step guidance as follows:

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. Then select the partition of your SD card, USB key, external hard drive, SSD or memory stick in the main interface, and click Format Partition from Partition Management menu in the left pane. Or right click on the target drive to select the Format feature.

Step 2: Then in the pop-up window, select FAT32 as the file system of your target partition or set the cluster size by yourself. Click OK to return to the main interface.

Step 3: Finally, click Apply to make this change effective.

If there is more than one partition on your removable drive, external hard drive or SSD, please repeat the above steps to format the entire disk. With this tool, "the format did not complete successfully micro SD card" error can be fixed.

Solution 5: Wipe the Entire Disk

If Windows DM tool is unable to format your micro SD card or any removable drive, in addition to using the third-party software to format it, there is another option for you to choose, that is to wipe the entire disk.

Step 1: After entering MiniTool Partition Wizard main interface, right click on the target disk and select Wipe Disk.

Step 2: Then you can see there are five wiping choices, and here we recommend you to choose the first or second method with fast speed. Next hit the OK button.

Step 3: At last, execute this wiping operation by hitting Apply.

Solution 6: Recreate Partition

In addition to the above ways to fix "virtual disk manager the format did not complete successfully SD card" issue, you can also delete the target partition and create a new partition by Windows DM.

If you have "the format did not complete successfully external hard drive" issue and decide to delete the partition on an SSD or external hard drive, you can use Delete Volume to delete the RAW volume. And then use New Simple Volume to create a new partition. During the process of recreating the partition, formatting will be done.

Sometimes, when deleting the RAW volume of the removable disk, for example, a micro SD card, memory stick or USB key, Windows DM tool may not work with the gray Delete Volume feature.

In this case, what should you do to fix "the format did not complete successfully RAW SD card/RAW USB" issue? Fortunately, you can also use MiniTool Partition Wizard to do this work.

Step 1: Open MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, and then select the partition you want to delete and click Delete Partition in the left pane.

Step 2: Then select Create Partition from Partition Management menu. Here set the file system of the target partition as FAT32. (USB drives use it by default.)

Step 3: Then let all changes effectual by hitting Apply. By recreating the partition, it is useful to fix this formatting error.

“I want to format my USB flash drive but I receive the error ‘the format did not complete successfully’ in Disk Management. This post is very helpful to me.”Click to Tweet

Bottom Line

In this post, we show you what the error "format did not complete successfully in Disk Management" is, the specific situations about this issue on an SSD, external hard drive, USB drive, micro SD card or memory stick and how to fix Windows 10/8/7 Disk Management the format did not complete successfully error, especially MiniTool Partition Wizard helps a lot.

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On the other hand, we welcome any question or suggestion for this post or our software from you. Please leave one comment in the following text box or send us an email via [email protected]. Much appreciated!

The Format Did Not Complete Successfully FAQ