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You can get Windows to recognise a flash drive as Local rather than Removable, and
then the OS will also recognise all the partitions created on that drive (up to 4) and not
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Community Choice Awards just the first. The key is to impose a driver upgrade on your flash hardware.
1. Visit www.xpefiles.com
What is a portable app?
2. Go to Hitachi Microdrive
Find out on the What is a
portable app? page. 3. Download XPfildrvr1224.zip
4. Extract cfadisk.sys and cfadisk.inf
User login and place them anywhere you like. The Desktop will do.
Username: *
Don't touch the binary file cfadisk.sys; but you need to edit the text file cfadisk.inf so
that certain key lines in it match your flash drive, and not the Hitachi Microdrive it was
Password: * built for. So, as preparation for the editing step, identify your flash drive correctly:
Remember this shorthand name. Leave the Computer management window open if you
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like: you are going to return to it. Now you need the longhand "technical" name (key
name) for your flash drive. To do this you will access the Windows registry. Be careful!
You don't want to edit the registry, just copy a phrase from it.
as it's a dangerous thing to leave open. The longkeyname is in your clipboard. Now
comes the editing bit:
(Probably double-clicking on it will start Notepad by default, depending on how your File
Types are set up.)
15. Find 3+3+2 = 8 lines under [cfadisk_device] and delete any 7 of them
16. Select everything from IDE\ to end-of-line inclusive
(ie after "cfadisk_install,")
17. Right-click Paste
to insert the longkeyname. Actually its longer than you want in this context, so
and then Save and Exit. (By the way the line you have edited is a single line. If it's got
wrapped into two, edit it back into one.) You now have the text file cfadisk.inf in the
required format. Go back to the Computer Management window and
19. Right-click on the device shortname under Disk drives in the Right panel
20. Choose Update driver
21. Choose Install from a list or specific location and press Next
22. Select "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install" and press Next
23. Press Have Disk (even though you haven't)
24. Browse to your recently edited cfadisk.inf
(colocated with cfadisk.sys of course)
25. Press Open then OK
Ignore the objection that "This driver is not digitally signed!" and
and there you are. Close everything up and open My Computer. You'll find that your
flash drive is identified as a Local disk and not a Removable disk, with all the benefits
thus conferred. Specifically, you can create up to 4 partitions on your flash drive which
are all visible to, and recognised by, Windows.
If something goes wrong, or if you later regret this step, you can recover the original
hardware architecture by right-clicking on the device shortname in Computer
Management and choosing Properties -> Driver -> Roll back driver.
Fergus
format the drive in NTFS and boot the comp with the drive in it. i had a problem with
that once lost about 13 megs off of my drive due to a lost partition that was locked.
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Thanks!!
Ed_P - May 29, 2007 - 1:55pm
As has been noted numerous times before NTFS is not recommended for USB
flash drives that need to last for an extended time. It also prevents the drive
from being bootable.
Ed
Ed