Overcoming the Challenges of Restoring a USB Drive with WinToUSB

When it comes to restoring a USB drive, there are several challenges that one may encounter. In my recent experience, I faced a situation where creating a new volume on my USB drive resulted in an error message stating 'The system cannot find the file specified.' This was despite following the standard process of formatting the drive and assigning a FAT32 file system.

To make matters more complicated, the only option available when right-clicking on the drive was to create a new simple volume. In Disk Manager, the drive appeared as 28.2GB Unallocated, but I was unable to wipe partitions using the Clean command in Diskpart or even open the format program from the right-click menu.

Furthermore, the file system was displayed as Unknown in properties, and the drive showed up as a Removable Disk (H:) with the option greyed out, similar to hidden files. This made it difficult for me to access the drive and restore my USB back to its original state.

After some research, I discovered that the flash drive did not come pre-configured for installing Windows, but rather acted as an external HDD with Windows installed and ready to be accessed. To overcome this challenge, I decided to use WinToUSB and create a 'Windows to Go' bootable flash using Microsoft's official Win10 ISO.

WinToUSB is a popular software that allows users to install Windows on a USB drive without the need for a physical installation media. After downloading and installing WinToUSB, I followed the prompts to create a bootable USB drive with my desired settings.

TLDR: In summary, creating a new volume on my USB drive resulted in an error message stating 'The system cannot find the file specified.' Despite this challenge, I was able to restore my USB drive using WinToUSB and create a 'Windows to Go' bootable flash. This solution allowed me to access the files on my friend's laptop that had its HDD busted, which was the primary goal of the restoration process.

By following these steps and overcoming the challenges mentioned above, I was able to successfully restore my USB drive and recover the necessary files from my friend's laptop. If you are experiencing similar issues with your USB drives or need assistance with restoring a Windows installation, WinToUSB is definitely worth considering as a solution.

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