# Howto: Format a read-only flash drive



## tabspace (Mar 23, 2006)

I got a flash drive as a gift from a company. It had some of their promotional material on it. I thought it was a pretty nice gesture, but when I plug it in, it comes up as a CDROM drive and it is read-only. I thought it would be nice if I could actually use this to store my files on, but it is configured like a burnt cd.

Is there any way to make this flash drive work for me, or am I just stuck with their promotional material and might as well trash it because I have already viewed it?

Thanks in advance,

Jason

UPDATE: I just noticed that ther also another removable disk drive that shows up in the disk management. It is not showing up in the explorer. This does let me add and remove files, but I have to manually type in the disk name and I am still unable to format the partition that shows up at CDROM with the files on it.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I believe that what you have is a U3 drive, visit www.u3.com and read all about them.  You can't change the CD-ROM side of the drive.


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## tabspace (Mar 23, 2006)

Thanks, John. I took a brief look at the website and it looks pretty cool. I guess since I cannot format the CD portion, I just am wondering why the removable disk drive portion is not showing up and how to get it to show up


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I don't know why it doesn't show up in My Computer, my U3 drive indeed displays both sides. They could have had custom software for the drive so that it's just used for their presentation. Did you try to assign a drive letter in My Computer to that drive?


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