Drivers/Hardware :: Possible To Create Multiple Partitions On USB Flash Drive?
Oct 19, 2015
I recently used a 16GB USB flash drive to create an installer for a new Linux distro. I noticed that the created partition is 8GB and the rest 8GB is unused. I want to create a second NTFS partition so I can use the USB as a recording medium for my PVR, but Disk Management doesn't give me this option. I then used MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition, which did create the partition but warned that it won't be recognized by Windows as it normally sees only the first partition on a USB Flash drive. I even went back to Disk Management and assigned a drive letter to the second partition, but in Explorer I see only the EFI partition (first, drive is formatted in GPT mode) with that drive letter. Is there any workaround? Of course I could just format the whole drive as NTFS, but I wouldn't like to do so until I don't need the installer anymore.
I have a Dell Venue 8 Pro with an upgraded Windows 10 installed. Always perform Windows Update but did not pay attention too closely. When the drive space was low and started looking a little bit closer, I found out that I have several Recovery Partitions. From Disk Management display, from left to right are the partitions:
The problem is I do not know which partition that Windows 10 actually created as its Recovery Partition. I do know that the 4.75 GB partition is my original Dell Venue 8 Pro Recovery Partition. Which one can I remove to allow the expansion of my C drive? What gives?
Having recently upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 I have tried to create a recovery drive to go on a USB flash drive. All I get, however, is the message " We can't create the recovery drive. A problem occurred while creating the recovery drive". I have tried a few times without success.
I looked at the Event Log and saw the following which, I believe, is related to the problem: Microsoft-Windows-CAP12. I.D.513.
I need to create a windows 10 PRO ISO on a flash drive to do an upgrade. They already have Windows 8.1 PRO so they need to upgrade to the windows 10 PRO version.
On the windows media creation tool, I only get an option for windows 10, not any other version of it. Where can i find the official ISO file for it.
I have a Surface Pro 4 that I want to set up a Dual Boot on. I normally wouldn't have too much of an issue resolving this on my own, but due to the Surface Pro 4 not supporting Legacy flash drives, my standard way (Booting into a MBR Flash Drive w/ an Offline OS on it and doing the defrag/moving the files to the beginning of the drive) of solving this issue has left me baffled. I've attempted downloading Rufus and utilizing a MBR ISO (Which failed, since it didn't have the EFI boot sector on it), going back and forth amongst various methods of removing secure boot (which was a doozy at first, after having to go through recovering my BitLocker key) in order to boot from legacy, all to no avail.
Basically, I want to take my SSD, and move all the files to the beginning, which I can't do in Windows due to system files being in use (Ironically, a large portion being near the end of the drive). All I am looking for is a method to create a bootable UEFI flash drive that I can use to defrag/do this from. I've dug a little bit around on Linux and didn't find anything that seemed to be able to do it, as most options seemed only relevant to Windows PCs. Is there any options available to do this? Or would formatting and reinstalling it be the only option?
What partitions I should have on my hard drive after I upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows Home Premium Build 10586. I have some new small partitions and I don't know if they belong to the OS or they got allocated from another source.
I have a USB flash drive which for some reason is formatted with an active partition.
I usually use Minitool Partition Wizard to set a partition as inactive but for some reason it doesn't work on this flash drive. I also tried booting from the Partition Wizard boot disk but that won't set the partition inactive either. I even deleted the partition and reformatted the flash drive but it popped up as active again!
How can I force the partition to be set inactive? Note it's quite an old USB flash drive so I'm wondering if there something in the hardware which stops it being set inactive?
I recently purchased a Windows 10 tablet, everything else works fine except one annoying issue. I have a 64 GB USB 2.0 flash drive, which works well on my desktop PC (Windows 7). I also have another 16 GB USB stick (USB 2.0). Both USB sticks work fine on my desktop PC. However, when I test the full size USB port on my tablet, only the 16 GB USB stick worked. For the 64 GB USB stick, as soon as I plug it in, the USB light starts to blink forever.
While the USB light blinks, I keep hearing the windows sound for detecting new USB device, but see no notification messages. When I open DISK management or File explorer, I see no trace of this USB stick at all. I also checked "device manager", under USB controllers, I do NOT see any USB Mass storage there, and there are no unknown device in the device manager either. I tried re-scan devices, restart computer, clean USB registry ... None of them works. Then I choose to show "hidden devices" in device manager, and now see a new "USB Mass Storage Device" appear under USB controllers, however the status is "not connected", even though the USB stick is plugged in and the light is blinking.
As I said, I tested the USB stick with my other computer and worked fine. I also tested the tablet's USB port by plugging in other USB devices, such as a 16 GB USB stick, a MicroSD USB reader with a 32GB MicroSD inserted, a USB mouse, etc. and they all worked fine. Now I am really puzzled. It does not look like my USB stick is dead or the USB port on the tablet has any problem.
I clean installed Win 10 RTM version on my laptop a few weeks ago. I have a basic GPT setup.
Installation went fine, however the installer created a 'Recovery' drive (D with a size of 600 MB (262 MB free) & a 'Local Disk' drive (E with a size of 451 MB (128 MB free).
I am stumped as to why it assigned letters to them. If you see the attachment of a snapshot of Partition Wizard, you will be able to see the setup.
My question, besides why the assigned letters is the where the status is listed as 'None'. Is it safe to delete these?? I am assuming that the only partitions i need to keep are the 'ESP', which is 'Active & Boot' - so it is needed to be able to boot into Windows. How about the one listed as 'Other' - the capacity is 128 MB & all 128 MB are used - do i save this one as well?
I really wanted a less cluttered setup - so when all these partitions were created, particularly 'D' & 'E', i was perplexed as to why they were created.
I already have my pc updated with windows 10, I recently upgraded my hard drive with a samsung 850 pro ssd but i discovered that my recovery partition no longer works and when i try to do a system image windows says it cannot do it because files are missing . I used the samsung data migration software that came with my ssd, when i go to disk management it shows my three partitions which are
500mb recovery partition
260mb efi system partition
windows c 476.18 gb ntfs , boot,page file, crash dump, primary partition
My question is if I do a clean install of windows 10 will these partitions be created again during the windows 10 installation automatically or will I loose some . I want to be able to recover my pc should I need to and have everything working. Someone suggested that I don't need a recovery partition and windows 10 does not create new partitions .
I don't know what the efi system partition is and don't know if i need it . i have watched some youtube videos of people doing clean installs of windows 10 and they all seem to differ . during installation when given the choice of where to install windows some people delete all the partitions on their hard drive while others pick which one .
I want to clean install Windows 10, and I already did that before using the tutorial here. But last time I did not have Ubuntu install.
And in the tutorial, you must delete all partitions in order for Windows to create the special necessary partitions (Recovery, MSR, MBR etc..)
But now that I have a Linux partition that I don't want to delete, and according to the tutorial, Windows installation will not create these partitions.
How can I manually create them? Is it simply allocating a space for them and naming them the proper way and Windows will know how to use them? Or there's more than that? Also, What happens if I do not have these partitions?
I am building a new PC with no internal storage. I am installing a 2.5" SATA dock in one 3.5" bay and one 3.5" SATA dock in a second 5.25" bay.
My intention is to have one SSD for my work PC on Windows 10, one SSD for my son for his gaming on Windows 7 (some of his games are not Win 10 compatible yet), and perhaps a third SSD for playing around with Linux installs, etc.
The 3.5" dock will have a 1TB HDD for backup.
From what I have read, since these drives will not technically be external. (plugged into the SATA on the mainboard through the dock, and not via USB or e-sata.), that their creation and use could be problematic if I use the UEFI boot system, or secure boot for that matter.
So.... I am looking for a methodology which I should use to setup these boot SSDs which will give me the least problems and management issues.
A side related question. I have a boot SSD with Win 7 home premium that is eligible for Win 10 upgrade. It currently resides in my Dell Alienware x-51 R1 system, but I want to move it to the new system as the drive my son will be using.
Will there be any issues in moving the drive to a new system architecture?If/when he can upgrade to Win 10, will there be any issues with that since the architecture has changed from the system of origin?Do I need to backup/reformat/restore the drive in order to get it to boot properly in the above mentioned docking bay system?Since only one drive could be used at any one time. In your opinion, do you think I need multiple Windows Licenses?
I have windows 10 build 1511 on a USB stick made by windows media creation tool now when install windows the drive has zero partitions.
When i install the copy from the USB stick i end up with 3 partitions one is 450MB (recovery partition) and another partition at 100MB called (EFI System partition) and last partition is windows 10.
Now if i delete all the partitions and install windows 10 from the USB drive again i get two partitions one at 500MB called (System Reserved) and the windows 10 partition.
Why if i install windows 10 multiple times i get different partitions being made?
I would like it to only make the two partitions every time.
So I recently bought a ssd to add to my pc so that I could add my OS and some other files on to the ssd and keep my old hdd as storage. After finally getting the OS onto the ssd and being able to boot from it I tried to transfer all of the files back to the original hdd from the backup I had made from the ssd after cloning the drive. Once completed the hdd was no longer showing up at all in my computer so I went into disk management and tried to set a path for it, but it was now split into two partitions (I am assuming because I took the backed up ssd and put it onto a hdd because the size of one of the partitions is the size of the ssd). I tried formatting both partitions and then extending it to combine them but whenever I do this it tells me there is not enough space on the disk to complete the operation.
While inslating Win10 i my new computer i made two partitions on the SSD, but this is giving me some problems of space, so i want to merge the C: disk with the F: disk (the D: disk is a hdd), in the C: disk i have the IOS and some other apps and the F: is empty. How to do this?
I have attached an image of my Disk Management screen. Disk 0 doesn't look right to me. Is there a problem here? if there is, how do I correct this? I am running W10 and the C drive is a Samsung SSD drive.
I have been trying out virtual box and running Linux distros. The computer started malfunctioning after updating a Linux distro running in virtual box needing to do a factory reset to my computer but all good now.
I plan to dual my computer with Linux and Windows 10 but when checking in Disk Management I noticed I have 6 partitions on the hard drive.
My question is could I delete the 490mb 45 mb 7.92gb partitions ready before I install a Linux distro.
I'm interested in the W10 free upgrade from a usb ISO image. I now have W7.
A couple of questions concerning the W10 installation from a bootable usb ISO image - will the hard drive require prior repartitioning, and what do I do when the install process asks for the license key ? AS I recall, installing W7 without a key only allowed 30 days of use.
In Windows 10, I insert the flash drive and the File Explorer window opens. I then double click on a file to open it's supporting app. I close both the File Explorer window and the app and eject the drive. The first eject results in a "device is currently in use" message. The second click displays the "Safe to remove" message.
If I don't open the app and just close the File Explorer window, the first eject attempt is successful.
In Win 7, I could eject the drive without closing the Windows Explorer window or the app. Ejecting the drive would close the Windows Explorer window and leave the app open, displaying the "Safe to remove" message. The file would remain in memory to be read. But an attempt to save it would fail.
I have been having problems starting up windows. I have a SSD in my laptop and I'm not sure if it is failing, or if my windows files are corrupt.
1.Windows will sometimes start, allow me to log in, but then freeze as soon as I get to the desktop. 2.Windows will start up to the login window and then freeze. 3.Computer will start, have a blank screen, but still have mouse that i can move. 4.Computer will start with error "hard disk (3f0) Laptop does all four of these in varying order, but most often it would do 2.
I have not been able to get it started into safe mode yet. (freezes up before getting there).I do have a bootable flash drive with Ubuntu on it, but when it boot, it doesn't recognize the hard drive.
I was going to make a USB Flash Drive to install windows 10 as described in tutorial by Brink. But I find that ISO has been removed?? Can I still make Flash Drive / How?:
Windows install says ( Can't install on USB flash drive.). That's how it sees my SSD. Do I have to put my original HDD back in, image SSD to it and then try to install?
Whenever i try to eject my Sandisk flash drive, by right-clicking on it's icon and clicking on "Eject Cruzer",I get an error window with the title, "Problem Ejecting USB Mass Storage Device".The message says, "Windows is unable to stop the device 'USB Mass Storage Device'. Don't remove this device while it is still in use. Close any programs using this device and then remove it."
This only happens the first time I attempt to eject my flash drive since connecting it.The second time I try to eject it, it always works.I know it's not a problem with my flash drive, because it works just fine on other computers.I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver for the flash drive in the Device Manager, but that didn't work.
