How to make windows see multiple partitions on a usb flash drive?

[mcraftax]

I have seen this asked across many sites but either the question is not answered, told it can not be done or links to programs/drivers which do not exist.

So I have a 64GB usb flash drive (kingston datatraveler se9 g2) and I create multiple partition on it using a range of programs but not disk manager as it does not support it as i have found. Partitioning software can not assign letters to more than the first too.

 

How do I get more than one partition to show up in windows and be assigned a drive letter?

Also i need a solution which can be used across different computers and computers where i have 0 permissions at all (school computers) - One way would i read was as a driver edit/replacement but idk.

From what i found windows treats removable media different to "hard" media/drives, so making the usb stick appear as a "hard" media will make this possible?

 

Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

I think you can just mount them in disk management.

[Doramius]

Flash drives communicate differently than traditional hard drives.  Their firmware dictates the properties of the flash drive, including partitions.  You have to know specifically the chipset on the flash drive, including version, and find software that can reflash the firmware properties.  Note that this does take a lot of risk because 1 misflash and the device is bricked....permanently.  I can also give you software recommendations, but without knowing the chipset and version of the drive you may just brick it.

[TetraSky]

Sorry but flash drives aren't made to have multiple partitions.
There exists softwares that can change the size of the main partition(useful when there's a corrupted flash cell that would otherwise make the entire drive useless), but none that I know of that can actually split a flash drive and have that show up in windows without potentially bricking the flash drive itself.

[Doramius]

5 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Sorry but flash drives aren't made to have multiple partitions.
There exists softwares that can change the size of the main partition(useful when there's a corrupted flash cell that would otherwise make the entire drive useless), but none that I know of that can actually split a flash drive and have that show up in windows without potentially bricking the flash drive itself.

Phison chips have software than can reflash and split their drives into multiple partitions.  But you can only use it with Phison chip flash drives.  I'm pretty sure there are others, but you cannot cross flash using a software with an incompatible chipset.  We used to get Dell machines with 8GB flash drives of the OS.  Problem was we had so many of the flash drives and we had to use our Deployed Enterprise OS image, so the drives were useless.  We cracked open the drives and re-flashed them as they were locked and setup with dual partitions.  main partition was the OS, and the second partition was writable space for saving drivers and other small files, etc.  The Phison software would allow us to reflash with the drive unlocked to read/write on both partitions, change to a single partition, or add a few more partitions.  If you didn't flash with the software for the correct chipset version, you bricked the flash drive.  Out of 200 flash drives, we probably bricked about 12.

[mcraftax]

30 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I think you can just mount them in disk management.

nooo.... don't think so

29 minutes ago, Doramius said:

Flash drives communicate differently than traditional hard drives.  Their firmware dictates the properties of the flash drive, including partitions.  You have to know specifically the chipset on the flash drive, including version, and find software that can reflash the firmware properties.  Note that this does take a lot of risk because 1 misflash and the device is bricked....permanently.  I can also give you software recommendations, but without knowing the chipset and version of the drive you may just brick it.

https://www.kingston.com/en/usb/personal_business/dtse9g2

I could not really find anything as i guess it is keep secret for various reasons. 

I was looking through drives properties, could it be in their?

17 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Sorry but flash drives aren't made to have multiple partitions.
There exists softwares that can change the size of the main partition(useful when there's a corrupted flash cell that would otherwise make the entire drive useless), but none that I know of that can actually split a flash drive and have that show up in windows without potentially bricking the flash drive itself.

ok

4 minutes ago, Doramius said:

Phison chips have software than can reflash and split their drives into multiple partitions.  But you can only use it with Phison chip flash drives.  I'm pretty sure there are others, but you cannot cross flash using a software with an incompatible chipset.  We used to get Dell machines with 8GB flash drives of the OS.  Problem was we had so many of the flash drives and we had to use our Deployed Enterprise OS image, so the drives were useless.  We cracked open the drives and re-flashed them as they were locked and setup with dual partitions.  main partition was the OS, and the second partition was writable space for saving drivers and other small files, etc.  The Phison software would allow us to reflash with the drive unlocked to read/write on both partitions, change to a single partition, or add a few more partitions.  If you didn't flash with the software for the correct chipset version, you bricked the flash drive.  Out of 200 flash drives, we probably bricked about 12.

ok

 

Would these work or brick it?

http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/16/how-to-create-multiple-usb-stick-partitions/

http://woshub.com/removable-usb-flash-drive-as-local-disk-in-windows-7/

They are the closest I have found to something that might work, they use the same things but slightly differently?

[Doramius]

I couldn't say for certain.  They look like tools that would work, but sometimes I've had to crack open the USB case.  Not an easy task for some drives.  It's all at your own risk.  Most of my experience is with Phison chip drives.  I've seen others work similarly, but no extensive use with the software.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 hours ago, Doramius said:

 

Flash drives communicate differently than traditional hard drives.  Their firmware dictates the properties of the flash drive, including partitions.

 

Nope, its just like any other block device, its just that windows limits you to one partition. You can do this easily in linux, osx or freebsd.

[Doramius]

17 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Nope, its just like any other block device, its just that windows limits you to one partition. You can do this easily in linux, osx or freebsd.

Not entirely true.  There are some newer flash drives that may have a new style memory controller, but they tend to be expensive.  SSDs have a different memory controller and setup, and shouldn't be confused with Flash Drives, even though function can be somewhat similar.  Most flash drives have a limited micro controller with a small ROM & RAM, regardless of the storage size.  The Phison drives I have wouldn't unlock or repartition in Linux or in OSX.  I'm not sure about newer SanDisk Flash Drives, but many of the older SanDisk Cruzer drives would not allow it either.  However, it is an option to run a live distro of Linux and see if your flash drive can be partitioned with it.

[FalconFour]

All right, that's it. Now having run into this thread multiple times when Googling for a legitimate answer, I've got to contribute what I do know. It's so incredibly frustrating seeing those earlier replies saying "oh noOo it can't be done, flash drives are sPeCiAl types of disks and need gold-plated controllers to act like hard drives"... wuuahhh~~ Yes, there is a grain of truth that controllers can be reprogrammed to present multiple physical disk instances within the same drive (I have one myself, an 8GB drive I turned into a "virtual CD/DVD" split with a regular Flash drive, done with the OEM programming tools). However, that's not at all the mechanism at play here. We're talking about traditional, logical partitions, just like hard drives. A Flash drive has an MBR and a PBR just the same as a hard drive. The trouble is that Windows has a looooong history of legacy code to deal with (esp. in how it reserves drive letters for "removable"-flagged drives that may have no media inside, like an SD reader).

 

Flash drives, from the very beginning, have always been designed to emulate traditional magnetic media, in the ways that matter. The only way that matters is that it's a completely blank, flat plane of bytes, with an LBA addressing scheme corresponding to which chunk of memory (sector) the OS wants to access. The information that makes up file systems and partitions itself is also stored in the same way, and in the same area. There's never any special disk controller magic needed. In fact, you can even partition a floppy disk if you give the disk an MBR at the first sector with multiple partitions. (though floppies are head/track/sector-based, not LBA)

 

The challenge comes when the OS uses a legacy mechanism designed for floppies, Zip disks, and MO (magneto-optical) media, and applies it to a Flash drive, just because the Flash drive says "I'm removable, don't write-cache me!". It ends up coming as a package deal -- up 'til Windows 10 Creators Update (1703) where it was _FINALLY_ addressed that flash drives, indeed, can be simply partitioned just like a hard drive.

 

So, today, you're likely to believe that "wow I can just partition my drive no problem", but that's a recent change. Take that drive back to Windows XP, Vista, or 7, and you'll end up finding that only the first partition is accessible.

 

That's why I'm here, Googling this. Hoping that someone had found a patch to tweak Windows 7 x64 to remove this "removable" flag from all USB media. No love.

 

The closest you can come is on 32-bit Windows, which doesn't force driver signature enforcement, where you can load the "Hitachi MicroDrive filter" which intercepts the question "hey are you removable?" to the drive, elbows the USB drive in the gut, steps in, and tells Windows "AH UM NO, I'M A HARD DRIVE". Then you can see all partitions on the drive.

 

Trouble is, you can only do that for 32-bit Windows. Get 4 GB of RAM or more, and you're stuck in the cage of "oh, it's removable, so it must be a Zip disk or a floppy that only has one partition". You can install the Hitachi MicroDrive filter ("cfadisk.sys") in 64-bit Windows, but you have to disable driver signature enforcement on every single boot... because if you don't... you get a "repairing Windows" boot-loop because the cfadisk driver glues itself in... meaning if it can't load, your drives can't load, your computer can't boot, you troubleshoot for half an hour and curse the sky-devils that brought you here.

 

tl;dr: this is 100% absolutely a Windows problem, not a flash drive problem, there's a way around it on old Windows, but it's ugly; only Windows 10 1703 supports it natively and properly like every other OS on earth does.

[LeSheen]

50 minutes ago, FalconFour said:

That's why I'm here, Googling this. Hoping that someone had found a patch to tweak Windows 7 x64

Maybe a stupid question, but why put in the effort? I mean windows 7 is at end of life.

In a year it won't get security updates unless you decide to pay extra. And even then its only for 3 more years.

[FalconFour]

29 minutes ago, LeSheen said:

Maybe a stupid question, but why put in the effort? I mean windows 7 is at end of life.

In a year it won't get security updates unless you decide to pay extra. And even then its only for 3 more years.

They say there are no stupid questions...

 

All computer hardware that's existed in the past still exists today. Some hardware can't gracefully run Windows 10 - I'm on one right now, writing this as I bang through trying to digitally sign that Hitachi filter for Windows 7 x64. It's got a GMA 3150 graphics adapter which has some disasterous flaw in the Microsoft-provided Win10 driver, causing its desktop/web performance to be like computing through a PowerPoint presentation. (and it's a nettop, no PCIe slot). In Windows 7, it's buttery smooth and proper. There seemed to be no way to fix it (since it's a chipset from 2010, it's been abandoned).

 

Computing hardware often simply migrates to lesser-affluent parts of the world, where it's bought for pennies, and serves to bring internet and computing to new areas of the world. If the computer is capable of comfortable web browsing, there's no reason to throw it out grind it up for tenuous raw material "recycling".

 

Granted, this is a fair edge case, but since I can't even find a flash drive under 64 GB these days, I sometimes need to partition it to be bootable on older systems (a 4gb boot partition, for example). Then I find out that I can't access the rest of the data on the drive (updates etc) after installing... because Microsoft.