Partitioning a Flash Drive

[Guest]

I have a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB Flash Drive, from which I want to run
Ubuntu. That installation works fine, however, I find I am unable to write
to the drive itself (because it works as a Live CD); the solution I came up
with was to partition my Flash Drive into two 1GB drives, the Ubuntu as the
primary, and a supplementary Logical Drive, formatted in FAT16. This worked
fine for Ubuntu, and for OSX, however, when I inserted my drive into my XP
computer, only the Ubuntu drive displayed. I went to Disk Manager, and found
that my other drive was in fact accounted for, it simply was inaccessible,
and could not be assigned a drive letter or otherwise be reached. Is there a
way in XP to assign drive letters (or otherwise access) 2 separate partitions
of a flash drive?

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I have a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro USB Flash Drive, from which I want to run
Ubuntu. That installation works fine, however, I find I am unable to write
to the drive itself (because it works as a Live CD); the solution I came up
with was to partition my Flash Drive into two 1GB drives, the Ubuntu as the
primary, and a supplementary Logical Drive, formatted in FAT16. This worked
fine for Ubuntu, and for OSX, however, when I inserted my drive into my XP
computer, only the Ubuntu drive displayed. I went to Disk Manager, and found
that my other drive was in fact accounted for, it simply was inaccessible,
and could not be assigned a drive letter or otherwise be reached. Is there a
way in XP to assign drive letters (or otherwise access) 2 separate partitions
of a flash drive?

No, on drives with drivetype 'removable' Windows will
always see the first partition only. There is no
technical reason, it's just a decision made by
Microsoft years ago.


Uwe

 

[... et al.]

No, on drives with drivetype 'removable' Windows will
always see the first partition only. There is no
technical reason, it's just a decision made by
Microsoft years ago.

Slightly incorrect. Under Windows, as tested under Win98SE, both
suitably formatted partitions are assigned drive-letters and can
used just fine. Under WinNT, as tested under WinXP, only the
first partition is acknowledged as you say.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Slightly incorrect. Under Windows, as tested under Win98SE, both
suitably formatted partitions are assigned drive-letters and can used
just fine. Under WinNT, as tested under WinXP, only the first partition
is acknowledged as you say.

Yes, your are right. It's true for NT4, W2K and higher only. I don't
know about NT3.


Uwe