Error: Couldn't clean the drive, Command failed: diskpart /s

I opened the console to see what was happening and looked at the flash results object.

It had one error (see title), then included some path on my system.

My USB is completely unallocated, I don’t know if that makes a difference, should I format it first? Windows will only let me format it as NTFS.

Hi,

Flashing will overwrite the whole device, does not matter what partitions or format is there before.
As long as you can select it in balenaEtcher it is good to go.
Let me know if you need more help.

Hello, have you figured out what the cause of the error was? If so, have you had any success fixing it?

Yes, I disabled every Windows Defender feature and I was able to successfully flash my drive. Not a great solution if you ask me…

Thank you for letting us know. I agree, disabling Windows Defender is not a great solution and we should be able to do better than that. The Windows settings “Controlled Folder Access”, “Focus Assist” and “Ransomware protection” are known to interfere with Etcher activity. Can you review the suggestions in this issue and let us know if they allow you to otherwise enable Windows Defender?

Hello, following up per my colleague’s previous message. Have you reviewed the suggestions in the following balena etcher issue to see if any of them allow you to keep Windows Defender enabled? See: [Windows 10] Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection blocks etcher · Issue #2958 · balena-io/etcher · GitHub

We would like to narrow down the cause so any information and testing you can provide from your end would be helpful.