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USB Pendrive format issues

fwor
fwor Posts: 6,942 Forumite
Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
Just bought a new 8Gb pendrive to use in a bootable pendrive Linux install, and I've hit a problem.

Although the company I bought it from made no reference to this, the pendrive actually appears to be two separate drives when you plug it in to the PC - one small 1.44Mb drive with a Lock utility on it, and the rest of the 8Gb as a separate empty drive. In Windows the small drive appears as a floppy disk, while under Linux it appears as a removable hard disk.

Does anyone know if it's possible to get rid of the small drive and just have one complete 8Gb partition? As two drives I'm sure it's going to create problems when trying to make it bootable. Note that the two parts of the pendrive appear as separate drives - not as separate partitions on a single drive.

Comments

  • isofa
    isofa Posts: 6,091 Forumite
    You should be able to sort it our using disk management under XP (Computer Management in Admin Tools or right click My Comp), I assume any partitions can be deleted and merged together, then reformatted, but haven't tried on a USB pen drive before...
  • fwor
    fwor Posts: 6,942 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Ok, had a go at that, but no luck.

    Disk Management doesn't show the small partition - probably because it thinks it's a floppy disk, so no chance of merging them there.

    At the moment I'm limited in what I can try until I know of something that def works, as I don't really want to trash it if I can get the supplier to replace it with another make/model which doesn't have this "feature".
  • isofa
    isofa Posts: 6,091 Forumite
    Can you do it via FDISK on a command prompt?

    Delete each partition and then setup a new one?
  • why not just install linux on the larger partition? looks like you are just guessing there may be a problem,
    Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.
  • isofa
    isofa Posts: 6,091 Forumite
    This might be useful.
  • aliEnRIK
    aliEnRIK Posts: 17,741 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    Cant say as ive ever had THAT problem before, but swissknife will probably sort it for you ~
    http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/SwissKnife.shtml
    :idea:
  • fwor
    fwor Posts: 6,942 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Thanks for the suggestions - I'll give em all a go later.
    tonyhague wrote: »
    why not just install linux on the larger partition? looks like you are just guessing there may be a problem,

    I'm just remembering the last time I tried it on an ordinary, single pendrive. It was a swine to set up and it only ever booted once...
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