Multiple Partitions on 2 GB USB Flash Drive Not Seen

[Patient Guy]

I am having a problem getting XP Pro SP2 to see multiple partitions on a
USB 2 GB pen drive.

The Transcend Jet drive was reformatted under Ubuntu Linux using a MS FAT16
filesystem with bootable Linux kernel. The partition is 700 MB.

The rest of the USB flash drive (about 1.2 GB) was formatted with an
extended-2 (ext2) filesystem.

When the USB drive is plugged into XP Pro SP2, it sees the 700 MB FAT16,
but not the 2nd partition.

So in the Ubuntu OS, I reformatted the 1.2 GB partition from ext2 to FAT32,
thinking perhaps that XP Pro SP2 was not seeing ext2, although I believe it
can recognize this filesystem.

Still it was not able to see the 2nd partition.

Anyone have an idea?

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I am having a problem getting XP Pro SP2 to see multiple partitions on a
USB 2 GB pen drive.

The Transcend Jet drive was reformatted under Ubuntu Linux using a MS FAT16
filesystem with bootable Linux kernel. The partition is 700 MB.

The rest of the USB flash drive (about 1.2 GB) was formatted with an
extended-2 (ext2) filesystem.

When the USB drive is plugged into XP Pro SP2, it sees the 700 MB FAT16,
but not the 2nd partition.

So in the Ubuntu OS, I reformatted the 1.2 GB partition from ext2 to FAT32,
thinking perhaps that XP Pro SP2 was not seeing ext2, although I believe it
can recognize this filesystem.

Still it was not able to see the 2nd partition.

Anyone have an idea?

Windows doesn't support multiple partitions on drives with removable
media. USB flash drives usually appear as such which is wrong because
the drive is removable not the media. But it is as it is...

Up to XP this is by design, under Vista it's an artificial limitation
probably for compatibility.

These pen drives with a little harddrive inside usually appear as
fixed drive, so multiple partitions work here.

There are flash drives which appear as fixed too but they are very
rare and so far I've not discovered a single model. A typical thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...general/browse_thread/thread/705019cfa7b951a8


Appearing as drive with removable media or not is controlled
by a single bit in the hardware's device descriptor, the RMB,
the Removable Media Bit.

Anton Bassov has published a little driver that changes
this bit, so all drives with RMB appears as drives without
to Windows:
Bit it's not made for daily useage, it's 'proof of concept',
it turns all removable USB drive into fixed including card-
readers and it has no unload routine.
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/soviet_direct_hooking.asp

The driver is found in the source files archive on top of the
page. To load the driver the OSR driver loader is helpful:
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?article=157

Or have a look in the discussion below the article.


Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Gordon]

I am having a problem getting XP Pro SP2 to see multiple partitions on a
USB 2 GB pen drive.

The Transcend Jet drive was reformatted under Ubuntu Linux using a MS
FAT16
filesystem with bootable Linux kernel. The partition is 700 MB.

The rest of the USB flash drive (about 1.2 GB) was formatted with an
extended-2 (ext2) filesystem.

When the USB drive is plugged into XP Pro SP2, it sees the 700 MB FAT16,
but not the 2nd partition.

So in the Ubuntu OS, I reformatted the 1.2 GB partition from ext2 to
FAT32, thinking perhaps that XP Pro SP2 was not seeing ext2, although I
believe it can recognize this filesystem.

Still it was not able to see the 2nd partition.

Anyone have an idea?

XP cannot see an ext3 partition natively. You need this:
http://www.fs-driver.org/