[How To] Partition a USB stick

I'm working on a project that requires multiple logical drives to operate. I didn't make it; I inherited it.

I do most of my dev. on my laptop which obviously has 1 HD and normally only 1 partition. I don't have access to any 3rd party tools to resize my main NTFS partition safely, so I turned to mass removeable storage to host this odd project.

My normal partitioning utility is simply the Logical Disk Mangler tool. I got myself a 4GB Memorex Traveldrive and got ready to partition it into 2 Logical drives.

To my utter dismay and disbelief, LDM refused to Delete the main partition. This would be the obvious first step in creating 2 partitions on the flash drive.

Google led me to this poster:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/post391796-6.html

The result is great so far. After telling Windows to use the included .SYS driver, I can use my flash stick like a normal hard drive. I will abbreviate the posters instructions here:

1) Go here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\USBSTOR

2) Copy and paste USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_Generic&Prod_STORAGE_DEVICE&Rev_9144 into notepad.

3) Edit cfadisk.inf - replace all lines like

%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install

with

%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_Generic&Prod_STORAGE_DEVICE&Rev_9144

4) Using Device Mangler, tell Windows to use the newly saved .INF file (Have Disk...), being sure to have the included .SYS file in the same folder.

After this procedure, I was able to delete the partition in LDM without rebooting, but since Windows asked to be rebooted so nicely, I oblidged it before doing any disk mangling operations.

After the obligatory reboot, I deleted the main partition and created 2 new ones (I formatted them as NTFS for funzies).

Only the 1st Partition is viewable on different computers, so I made a hidden directory called "Install" into which I placed the .INF and .SYS files. The same Driver Upgrade procedure must be followed to gain access to any other partitions created by the 1st computer. The 2nd computer cried out for a reboot, but it's really not necessary. I was able to see all my partitions right away.

Anyone know how to bundle all this into an Autorun.INF?

Dave

Im not sure if this is the correct way to do it, but it should work. Have the autorun.inf run a batch file or exe to do all of the work. That way it should be a simpler autorun.

So...

Why not just create some mapped logical drive names that point to silly old folders on whatever you device you want?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by szlamany

So...

Why not just create some mapped logical drive names that point to silly old folders on whatever you device you want?

---

The application doesn't like that. Good idea though.

Do you have access to a linux box? Linux has partitioning tools that actually work rather than the useless ones MS platforms have to offer.

That's what I always do if I have a stick that windows can't cope with, shove the stick in a linux box and splat the entire data area then use fdisk to reinstate whatever partitions I want. Often its enough just to get a fat32 partition on there and then reformat it in windows for compatibility's sake.

You don't necessarily have to delete the main partition. Merely resizing it and formatting it would do surely?

This proved to be interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbkC5PyAMag

An interesting read...

http://www.lancelhoff.com/multi-part...ve-in-windows/

i was under the impression no special driver was needed. You merely needed to edit the registry to tell the OS the drive was not removable.
If your place is going win 7 when it comes out, it has the ability to mount virtual drives as hard drives. Perhaps you could put two of those on the thumb drive. Then again you could use two thumb drives?

I don't know if this will work, but you can download TrueCrypt

http://www.truecrypt.org/

Normally you'd create either a file container or encrypt an entire drive which TrueCrypt mounts in Windows to one of the drive letters. You could just create a bunch of small containers and mount them all to create a series of drives on your PC.

They disappear once you restart and you have to remount them for them to re-appear as drives. Don't know if this would help you