I am trying to reuse a USB boot drive (Mac) for regular file storage on Windows ... when Windows detects it, it won't let me reformat to anything greater than a 40 MB or so - and this is an 8 GB drive... How do you format the drive back to its original factory state?
Answer
You did not provide any information about which version of Windows you are using or about what sort of partitioning this USB drive is using.
If you are using Windows 7 then perhaps it cannot delete the partitions because your USB drive was GPT formatted by your Mac? If that is the case, then run DISKPART from an (elevated) command prompt. If a partition is READ ONLY or HIDDEN I don't think it can be deleted unless you force it. For example, use DELETE PARTITION OVERRIDE.
See the HELP for DISKPART for more info if you need it.
Of course, using dd from a Linux Live CD boot is also a way to clear the drive. FWIW, you don't have to write zeros to the entire USB drive. Just clearing the first MiB or so would do it. Adding count=2 to the example in hotei's answer should accomplish this.dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/usb_device_name_goes_here bs=1024k count=2
Unless I've screwed it up the above should write 2 blocks of 1024k (1MiB) zero bytes to the device you specify as the outfile (of=). This will wipe out the partition table whether it is GPT or MBR and then Windows can partition it as you wish.
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