Partition USB Pen Drive

I played around a bit with a PNY 8 GB thumb drive.

No matter what I changed in PW, the extra partition is not usable in Windows.
Changed the following
partition typeID from FAT32 to FAT32 LBA
extended to primary
deleted / recreated partition (PW tells you here - Windows won't see the part!)

on one of the operations PW mounted the partition (sorry I didn't keep good notes on that)

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Windows is just stubborn in this regard. There is no reason that a thumb drive cannot be partitioned and used in Windows given the devices have grown in capacity.

I compared my ext Seagate spinner HDD properties to the PNY thumb drive properties and did not see where Windows makes the distinction. I didn't look that close though. Windows might read the device firmware - I'm not sure on that.

Kudos to whs for posting the information he has.

Golden, do you have a method that makes the new partition on the thumb drive visible/useable in Windows. This limitation has always bugged me.

Thanks,

Bill
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I made another couple of experiments:

1. I had a 64GB stick with a single primary partition. But that stick was never used for anything. I tried to shrink the partition but Disk management did not let me - the option was greyed out.

2. I deleted that single partition to get unallocated space. There I first defined a 20GB partition and then I defined a second partition in the rest of the unallocated space. That was possible (all with Disk Management).

Thanks for the guide Wolfgang, i will take a look through that soon.

I tried doing what you mentioned about in post #22 but i don't get the delete option?
Please note, I'm at home using a different pen drive for this test.

Delete Volume is greyed out... do i need to do something prior to this?



Cheers,
Jamie

jumanji said:

I have to add that SanDisk pen drives manufactured between June 2012 and Dec 2013 or about were configured as Fixed Disks. Is yours a SanDisk?

The one i have been using is Kingston Data Traveller G4, my last post was with a 64gb SSK

Regards,
Jamie

It is a Sandisk but I have no idea when it was produced and the details in the device properties do not tell me. I bought it in April this year. Maybe I can find another empty stick in my big box and see what that yields.

Update: I found an older Kingston stick and allocated 1 partition leaving some unallocated space. When I wanted to create the second partition (with Partition Wizard because nothing worked in Disk Management), I got the message below. And when I proceeded anyhow, PW got stuck at 84%.

This task seems to be one of those easy in theory but harder in practice, i hope we can get to the bottom of it as this isn't my first attempt to do this

i have been looking round the web and seen a few things that mention this and the solution seems very complicated... Flipping the removable bit of your pen drive but can't see anything clear cut about this.

Linux doesn't seem to have this issue :)

jumanji posted the answer, but there is a caution in trying to flip the bit on a pen drive - you can 'brick' it if something goes awry. I did some research and found that it's not worth the effort given that Microsoft allows Win8-to-Go.

For a list of certified flash drives for Win8-to-go, see:
Windows To Go

Scroll down to the Windows to go certified drives.

What does this have to do with the issue? These pen drives can be partitioned!

So.... I'll be getting a few new pen drives when they're on sale (back-to-school is coming soon!)