Format linux USB drive in Windows (not visible in file explorer)

Launch command prompt or Powershell, run the command diskpart. The Diskpart command line application will open.

First, type list disk to show all of the disks connected to the PC. Now determine which of these is your Linux disk. You can usually identify it based on the sizes listed. You will want to be 100% sure of your selection here because the following commands will wipe ALL DATA from whichever disk you select.

Select the disk by using the command select disk X where X is the number of your disk from the previous command. Once you have selected your disk, use clean to remove all existing partitions.

Create a new partition with create partition primary and then mark it as active. Finally, we can format the disk with format fs=Fat32 quick. Now your USB drive or SD card is ready to be used again.

For quick reference, here are all of the commands in order:

diskpart
list disk
select disk X
clean
create partition primary
active
format fs=Fat32 quick

Courtesy of https://www.jackofalladmins.com/admin%20adventures/knowledge%20bombs/format-linux-drive-windows/

The term "low-level format" should be avoided because many people misuse this term - it only applies to floppy disks and very old types of hard drives. It's just "format."

When you plug in the USB drive, the drive should show up in "This PC" in File Explorer. To get to File Explorer, press the Windows key + E and it will pop up. You will have to look in the left to find "This PC"

Find your drive, then right click it. "Format" should be among the options presented. Make sure you select "FAT32" or "FAT" and not "NTFS" or "exFAT."

If you do not see FAT32 or FAT, your USB drive is probably bigger than 32GB. You should use a smaller drive because you'll probably be wasting a lot of space on it to simply record some antivirus utilities.