Question Blank space before USB Flash Drive partition?

[Super Spartan]

I noticed some USB Flash drives that I buy always have a 200 or 250MB blank partition before the main partition. All formatting tools such as MiniTool Partition Wizard and the likes don't do this. Is there any benefit to this blank space that is set and is there a proper way to actually reformat a USB Flash drive the way it came from the manufacturer? I found an SD Card Formatting tool but none for USB Flash drives.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, due to flash block and page-size alignment, the optimal starting sector for an MBR-partitioned (optional for media marked as Removable), and FAT32-formatted volume (that traditionally started on sector offset 63, which is not really a power-of-2 size multiple), might need to be "aligned". I'm not sure if "Fat32Formatter" will do that or not.

 

[Super Spartan]

Well, due to flash block and page-size alignment, the optimal starting sector for an MBR-partitioned (optional for media marked as Removable), and FAT32-formatted volume (that traditionally started on sector offset 63, which is not really a power-of-2 size multiple), might need to be "aligned". I'm not sure if "Fat32Formatter" will do that or not.

This was the space it had before:



Can I just manually create that space and it'd be the same alignment as you mentioned?

 

[UsandThem]

I think I've had a few USB thumb drives over the years come with some manufacturer's utility preinstalled (I think it might have shown unallocated like that, but it's been a number of years since I last saw it), but you should be able to use diskpart clean command to wipe out anything like that out.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/85819-erase-disk-using-diskpart-clean-command-windows-10-a.html

Actually, this is an older thread about deleting partitions with diskpart, so it can show you the additional commands of deleting a partition:

https://superuser.com/questions/536813/how-to-delete-a-partition-on-a-usb-drive