# Directly format drive?

**URL:** <https://forums.balena.io/t/directly-format-drive/349630>\
**Category:** balenaEtcher\
**Tags:** support\
**Created:** [October 10, 2021, 6:02pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/directly-format-drive/349630 "2021-10-10T18:02:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 6:02pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/directly-format-drive/349630/1 "2021-10-10T18:02:38Z")

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I know you can flash drives with ISO images, and copy entire drives to the other drive, but can you FORMAT the drive directly?

And why would I want to do this if there’s multiple other tools out there to do so?

**IT IS BEAUSE THE DRIVE HAS NO LETTER ASSIGNED TO IT!!!**  
And balenaEtcher can read any type of drive that has input, and it even reads my external drive that has no letter.

So can I directly format it using balenaEtcher?

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**Author:** ![dtischler](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/dtischler/32/2483_2.png) [@dtischler](https://forums.balena.io/u/dtischler)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2021, 6:29pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/directly-format-drive/349630/2 "2021-10-18T18:29:09Z")

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Hi @Wolfy – You are correct, Etcher does not have a “format-only” function in it. It only has the ability to take the contents of an image, and write that to a disk. You might want to try Ubuntu (a VM should be fine) to see if that can read the drive and format it. Thanks.

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**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2021, 1:22pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/directly-format-drive/349630/4 "2021-11-09T13:22:25Z")

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Thanks for the reply.

One question… can it have that option in EtcherPro?

Like to format-only?

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**Author:** ![konmouz](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/konmouz/32/7882_2.png) [@konmouz](https://forums.balena.io/u/konmouz)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2021, 4:29pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/directly-format-drive/349630/6 "2021-11-16T16:29:34Z")

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@Wolfy To be clear EtcherPro is using standard Etcher so the features are the same. However, we are working on enabling formatting drives on Etcher and therefore EtcherPro that he hope to release soon.

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**Author:** ![AngelicAdvocate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/0ea827/32.png) [@AngelicAdvocate](https://forums.balena.io/u/AngelicAdvocate)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 4:55pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/directly-format-drive/349630/8 "2025-04-12T16:55:33Z")

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theres better ways to acomplish this. but on difficult drives you can kinda use balena to help. select a random iso and the drive you want to eventually format. then start the flash and imediately press the cancel button. now the drive can easily have a drive letter assigned in windows disk management. kinda hacky but its quick and easy.