Departitioning a Flash Drive

So I got a free flash drive, but it has been partitioned to act as two. Is there anyway to make it act normally as 1 drive again? K: is also write protected.

 

Downloading Ubuntu at the moment. Thanks for the help! I'll post an update saying how it turned out.

 

Smack it and say repartition , do it bitch cause I told you to. Nah but in all serious if its locked and you were on a mac just go to get in after right clicking and unlock it the partition and pick single in the options in disk utility.

 

If the partitions are enforced by the flash drive controller, no OS can ignore it. You would need to Download the service tool for that specific controller chip and reset the layout.

However, it doesn't look like that to me.

Just fire up a command prompt in windows and do:

Diskpart
List disk (take note of which disk is flash drive size)
Select disk x (put in number from above)
Clean
Create part pri
Assign
Format fs=fat32 quick
Exit

 

If you're using Windoze, get a program called ESEAUS partition manager. As far as I know its free and it works like a charm. Should sort you out without live cd's or command line.

 

Tired loading on my desktop and after saying "try it", it just gives a black screen and the drive stops spinning. I'll test it on my laptop tomorrow.

Tired and it still said that it had write protection. Thanks for the suggestion though!

Will try tomorrow, thanks!

 

You just need to find out the drive controller chip and get the service tool for that.

I had a tool on my laptop I only deleted a few days ago that did this. I will try and find the name of it again.

Once you have the name of the controller chip, you can search http://flashboot.ru/ for the service tool

 

Sorry for not responding... :redface: At this point though I don't want to be taking it apart as it's not worth that much to me. Thanks for all the help though! If I ever get anywhere with it I'll post an update.

 

you dont need to take it apart?

 

Having never worked with flash drives before, only used them, I assume I would have had to open it up and look at the chip. Or is this like DVDs where a program can tell me the all the info on it?

 

Why not unconditional format it? Any Data on there can be temporarily dumped to the hard drive.

 

This isnt a hard disk or stored within a writeable area. You need a special tool to do it.

The disk layout (i.e. showing as 2 drives, not partitions) it stored in the controller chip, not the FAT.

MasterOfPuppets,

Yes, There is a tool that can tell you. I am trying to find it again now.

edit:

http://www.fake-memory.com/Chip_Genius.html

Use that, paste results here. The you need service tool from website I mentioned above.

 

Just as Bad_Ad84 mentioned:

Hard drives and flash drives do conceal their firmware and persistent settings on their storage media. There's no point on adding more flash storage to a device if you already have dozens (on some ca ses hundreds or thousands) of gigabytes free for firmware and layout storage.

One thing that Bad_Ad84 didn't mention is that you run into the risk of completely bricking :gravedigging: the device if you mean to play with the firmware settings ...

 

I was intending to guide him as he posted results. But probably should have mentioned that.

But seeing as he said he wasn't going to bother with it anymore - figured he's not overly bothered about it all anyway.

 

Here's the info on it. I assume download the tools listed?

 

This is the latest version of the tool for that controller chip.


Run it and take some screenshots. unfortunately the tools all vary and i have never seen this controller before.

You will probably see the drive listed in the tool, try pressing the button next to it which should give you a bunch of options.

 

Hm...



I went to config port and selected the two drives that is the flash drive, but even after that all I can do is go to setup.

 

Screenshot of setup window please