Re: *REALLY* formatting a USB flash drive

From: Arno Wagner (me_at_privacy.net)
Date: 01/05/05 

Date: 5 Jan 2005 14:21:28 GMT

Previously .... <e56c3678@adelphia.net> wrote:
> I have not run inot (or heard of) this problem before. What make/model is
> your USB flash drive? (All of mine have been recognized as a 256MB
> removable hard drive.)

> Have you tried looking at it via XP's Disk management console, to see if it
> might be partitioned at the hardware level? It may have come from the
> factory like that to solve a backward compatibility issue. in which case you
> might be able to re-partition and re-format.

> Hope this helps.
> J

> "trmatthe" <trmatthe@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:1104682684.560181.151590@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>> Hi. I have a standard 256 MB USB2 flash drive. It presents itself to
>> Windows XP and Linux as two parts - a floppy drive and a mass storage
>> device of around 240 MB.
>>
>> What I would like to do is remove the floppy emulation section and
>> partition it as a single partition.
>>
>> Under linux I have been able to modify the partition table for the mass
>> storage component (fdisk on /dev/sdb) , but not the floppy emulation.
>> Does anybody have any suggestions ?

If it shows up as two devices (try "lsusb"), then that is a
hardware/firmware feature and you can likely not do anything
about it. I also don't think there is a way to get this effect
purely in software, i.e. there has to be some hardware support
on the device itself for this.

Arno 

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