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Sorry, this is waaaaaaaaaaay off-topic, but I wondered if any of the USB experts might happen to know:
I was at the UK Embedded Systems Show the other day, and got a free USB stick from Farnell. When plugged-in, this shows up as two drives: 1. A CD-ROM drive, which has an auto-play promotional movie on it; 2. A "normal" USB drive.
The trouble is, every time you plug it in, it tries to play the movie again!
:-(
Win-XP says the CD-ROM part is read-only, so won't let me delete the files or format it.
So, is there any way to get rid of this movie? Or do I just junk the whole stick?
The partition tools provided by Microsoft are not good. I think that, it is because Microsoft wants to protect its OS. You need to find a good partition tool to erase the CDFS.
Can't find any good links for you, But you can try the keywords "Remove CDFS".
The below link says:
I had the same problem, I used Gparted on a Linux Live CD. I used Puppy Linux and re-formatted both to FAT32 so I have 2 partitions to use now.
www.pcadvisor.co.uk/.../index.cfm
In my experiances, most Linux distributions provide good partition tools.
For Windows Environment, you can try SPFDisk.
spfdisk.sourceforge.net/
It is designed by a Taiwanese engineer, not easy to find a good English Documentation.
Before messing with searching for Partition-management tools, the basic question needs to be answered: "Is it likely that this is being done in the MBR and/or Partition table?"
If it isn't a "Partition" - but a firmware thing - then no Partition-management tools are going to help!
"Definitely - it's only a 512MB stick!"
Andy, don't you think you're taking recycling a little too far?
I would be surprised if it is done with partitions. Sounds more like a firmware feature.
If you have a proper partition tools, it will be very easy to examine that.
Why do you think I replied, "Definitely", to the suggestion, "in terms of return on investment, it'd be an almost certain disaster"...?!
;-)
You missed my point: if it's not likely to be the MBR and/or Partition Table, then there is no point in trying to find "proper partition tools" - is there?!
:-)
For me, I just need to restart my desktop, boot into Ubuntu Linux, I don't need to find anything, so it only takes several minutes to me. But trying to find some software, scan viruses, read documentation, it realy takes too much time.
I always keep a CD with gparted for handling repairs, migration to larger disks etc. It has partition editor etc.
Andy,
you would be better to find an expert cracker, than a USB expert ;-)
I can make up such a USB stick for you within 30 min, modifying KEIL example to support multiple LUNs. But I don't know how to crack your stick, other than with a hammer :-)
Tsuneo
So what you're saying is that this is a configuration in the stick's "firmware" to create 2 entirely separate "drives" - and not some kind of "partitioning" of a single drive?
In which case, it is pointless to even try messing about with disk editing or partitioning software?
Thanks, that is exactly what I wanted to know!
I will try the hammer approach - as that, at least, will be fun!
A selective use of the hammer may possibly produce hardware that you could reprogram and play with.
As long as I know, there is no way to make a "CD-ROM" partition on the MBR of a HDD or a USB stick. For USB stick, multiple LUNs support such a configuration easily. A LUN for usual USB stick returns PDT=0x00 to INQUIRY, CD-ROM LUN returns PDT=0x05 (PDT: Peripheral Device Type)
I heard OTi, a major manufacturer of controller chips for USB stick, has released such chips. U3 also applies OTi chip.
I believe the CD-ROM files are stored on the FLASH, too. I suppose a hidden command tunes the size of CD-ROM "partition" on the FLASH. But I don't know the command.
Then, you'd better to find an expert cracker :-)
There are a number of companies that are selling this kind of products.
One products boots a special application from the CD partition, and this program then makes cryptographic access to the data on the second partition, while allowing no-install applications to be run on windows and accessing protected data files.
Another common trick is that a number of GSM modules initially boots as a CD, to allow the PC to install the drivers from the virtual CD. Obviously a bit problematic when not using them on a Wintel platform.
There are also a number of USB thumb drives with one open partition with either a rescue program or a cryptographic driver, and a second disk that has protected or unprotected user data.