Solved: (Video) Windows Cannot Delete the System Volume on This Disk
Sometimes Windows cannot delete the system volume on the disk because the partition table is corrupt. The solution is very easy and all the tools required to solve this problem are pre-installed and ready to use on any Windows 10 (+) computer.
In short, the Disk Management utility cannot delete the volume because there is corrupt data in the partition table of the device. This issue we are talking about is most likely associated with a USB flash drive and sometimes USB hard drives.
One of the reasons a user will get a corrupt partition table is from formatting the USB device over and over again. Sometimes computers just don’t do what they are supposed to do! Surprise!
A common reason a user would like to delete the volume of a flash drive is to start “clean” with a fresh device. The reason to start “clean” is because some other function or task is not working as expected. For example, a user trying to create an digital image file (.img) from a physical USB flash drive continues to create corrupt image files. Well, when you start with a corrupt partition table, you’ll end up with a corrupt image file.
Another reason could be a user is trying to make a two partition flash drive using Disk Management. However, you cannot make a two partition flash drive if you cannot delete the volume in the first place!
We did a great write up about “How to partition a USB flash drive in Windows” a while back. A good read if you have the time.
The below steps will show you exactly how to fix this problem. There is a video at the bottom of this post showing the steps.
- Connect your flash drive
- In the search field in Windows (bottom left white box that says “Type here to search”) type “Disk Management” and click ENTER on the keyboard. Disk Management should pop up.
- In the search field in Windows type “diskpart” and click ENTER on the keyboard. DiskPart will either pop open, or a dialogue box will ask if you want to open it, click YES
- In DiskPart type “list disk“
- From the list provided determine which disk number represents your USB flash drive or hard drive
- In the screen shot below, our disk is #1
- Type “select disk x” *In this example we typed “select disk 1”
- Type “clean“
- When that is complete, toggle over to the Disk Management utility
- Right click the box which represents the USB flash drive and select “New Simple Volume“
- Follow the prompts in the wizard to complete the process
After completing the above steps the flash drive is now ready for use. In addition, if it is required to go back and delete the volume, say to make a two partition flash drive, you can now do this without the error message “This Request Is Not Supported”
Here is a video for the above process:
Tags: cannot delete system volume, disk management, flash drive, solved, usb