When you try to flash a Linux boot USB Stick from Windows, typically using Balena Etcher, the process will fail due to there already being partitions on the stick.
If you open up Windows Disk Management it will typically show up like this:
The solution is to Windows program “diskpart”, by pressing Meta key + R, typing “diskpart” and pressing enter. Here you can list the hard drives in your system and select the one you which to wipe, or clean, and have it done for you, like so:
The above commands should then result in an empty partition table which you can now either partition using Windows Disk Management, or flash an image onto using Balena Etcher, to verify this you can check the partition table with Windows Disk Management:
