# Solved: Help removing partition on USB pen drive



## Rich_F (Oct 17, 2007)

Hiya

I bought a 2GB USB pendrive (brand "integral" - never heard if it!)

It works fine, but came with security software and a 2Mb partition that's a pain in the neck.

I'm running Vista home premium and have tried to remove the partition using the disk partition tool. The remove volume option is greyed out  

I've done a surf around on google and there's all kinds of solutions involving boot disks that seem overkill. I've tried downloading something called partition magic that doesn't like running ("init failed: error 117. Partitions drive letter cannot be identified"), so have given up!

Surely there's a quick fix here I'm missing?  

many many thanks in advance

Rich _F


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## grengadgy (Oct 15, 2007)

Try this formating tool from HP. It should work but will erase everything on your flash drive so be sure to save it on your hard drive 1st. It will format as "fat,fat32 or ntfs" but everybody recommends "fat", "ntfs" rewrites to often and that tends to make flash drives fail sooner. So I have read.

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

I wouldn't mess with it for 2MB of space. You could end up crippling the drive completely.


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

A Linux Live CD is possibly the easiest tool for such a job.

Don't think I hit any problem in reformat the drive to any filing system yet, but the intensive journalling activities of certin filing systems can wear out the pen drive quickly. A pen drive has a finite number of read/write cycles.

Fat16 is standard for pen drives below 2Gb as this is the addressibility of the filing system. Beyond that fat32 is commonly used.


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## grengadgy (Oct 15, 2007)

Actually the free program that I posted about works very well and it made to format flash drives. I don't know if it works on the "u3" removal but there's a free tool to remove that also.

"u3" removal free tool
http://www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1415


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## Rich_F (Oct 17, 2007)

Thanks for the replies. some comments as I'm not quite sure of some of the terms used.

grengadgy - the hp tool does indeed format the pen drive, but it doesn't get ride of the partition! I just end up formatting each part.. and what does the "u3" tool do?

Doublehelix - fair point but I'll take the risk. Having both drive letters pop up is really annoying and I'm sure there must a simple fix for this!

Saikee - what's a linux live cd? I'd rather not have to install a whole new operating system for the sake a poxy pen drive!

Replies very very welcomed...

Thanks

Rich F


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

Some people literally fix something to death. The drive obviously has some built-in software. If standard formatting tricks don't work, messing with it could leave with you 0MB of usable space.


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

A Linux Live CD is one that can run on a CD without being installed into a hard disk.

In other word you run a full blown operating system that can play mp3, view photos, surf Internet, edit spreadsheets and amend Word documents in the Windows partition without waking up the M$ operating system.

While a M$ system supports only the filing systems used by M$ like fat16, fat32 and ntfs filing systems/partitions Linux supports 100+ partition types. As such Linux is a *giant utility* even if you do not use it as an operating system, like salvage a dying hard disk, clone and boot all M$ systems.

Because Linux supports booting from USB pen drives so a Linux user can install different boot loaders into a pen drive's boot sector, delete and create different partitions.

In Linux one can have many controls on a PC over and about what a M$ would permit, like slowing down a hard speed, change the scanning frequencies of monitor, booting operating systems from USB devices, alter the bios boot disk order, hide and unhide partitions etc. Changing a couple of fat16 partitions in a pen drive is child play in Linux.

I am not here to sell Linux but it is free from download or from a Linux magazine. Although some may not agree that it is better than the proprietary systems but few would dispute that it is more secure. There are over 50 countries involved in its development. It is not owned by any organization so no one advertises it but in its current state it is a formidable operating system.


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## Rich_F (Oct 17, 2007)

Doublehelix - point taken. 

Saikee - I appreciate the info but feel the solution is too much for me.

What I've done is to remove the drive letter for the small part of the drive so its hidden. That way it doesn't recognise it exists and doesn't pop up. job done 

R


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

Knowing an additional operating system can help a user to understand his/her actiion in Windows.

Removing a drive letter in WIndows is equivalent executing a "umount" on the device in Unix or Linux. Similarly to assign a drive letter in Windows is to "mount" the device.


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