Flash stick showing as "Local Disk"

I just got a new 16GB SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 flash drive that says Local disk instead of Removable Disk, which all the other USB flash drives do.
I did uninstall its driver, replugged and it still shows as Local Disk.

This is usually a driver issue (99% of the time). there are a ton of articles about how to turn a flash drive into a local drive using a third party driver. My suggestion would be to contact SanDisk directly and hopefully they have an answer. By uninstalling the drivers then letting windows install the "same" drivers again your issue won't go away. Another suggestion is to look at the SanDisk website for compatible drivers.

I have seen where someone wants a program installed on a removable drive for security reasons the drive could be removed to prevent others from running said program. in order to install it the removable drive needs to be converted to local drive.

it could also be a USBstor.sys file that is corrupt. (again it's a driver issue) see this on MS forums

Thanks Herb for the memory jog. SanDisk is indeed the culprit, or rather it's another reason against Win 8.
Flash Drive shows as Hard Disk Drive (Fixed Disk) in Windows Explorer

I thought I had seen that as well, thanks for the link. I am also a member of the anti8 club :)
There is another thread about this issue and I wonder if other manufactures are doing the same.

Dunno, I have a new Adata and Patriot flash drive which don't show as hard disks. At least there should be a way to change them to removable. I was on chat with SanDisk and was the same as talking to an amoeba.

I just got 2 brand new AData flash drives, 16GB each, and they appear as removable devices. Apparently SanDisk is the only company following the MS license.

rshewmaker said:

It's SadDisk's, I mean SanDisk's fault. That's cool, but is there any resolution to this?

For me I returned the SanDisk stick and bought another A-Data stick.