Removing redundant drive

[Ephemeron]

My memory stick has two drive letters when I use it. I don't know why. It's not a Smartdrive or anything. A second drive just appears when I plug it in, with a capacity of only a few megabytes. I don't know what it's for, and I want to get rid of it, since this makes it incompatible with certain systems. Is there any way I can format my memory stick to do this?

[bldegle2]

open 'my computer', right click the drive icon with the largest partition, formatting will be an option just like any other storage/OS drive, do the full format and see if the little partition disappears, my bet it will...if it doesn't, there are other avenues to take...........

good luck,

laterzzzzzz.............

[Steve R Jones]

Formatting will just one or both partitions empty

You can go into Diskmgmt.msc and zap both partitions and then recreate one large one.

*** Course you will lose ALL data on the drive when you do this. ***

[Ephemeron]

open 'my computer', right click the drive icon with the largest partition, formatting will be an option just like any other storage/OS drive, do the full format and see if the little partition disappears, my bet it will...if it doesn't, there are other avenues to take...........

good luck,

laterzzzzzz.............

I saw your reply and I thought "AH, why didn't I try this before?" Then I realised I had tried it before. I tried it again - no success. I noticed that the main drive is FAT32, while the 'parasite drive' is FAT, with no option of converting to FAT32. Furthermore Disk Management recognises them as two separate drives, rather than partitions of the same drive.

For now I'm just going to leave the unwanted drive in an unformatted state, and remove its drive letter so I don't have to see it when plugged into my home computer.

[bldegle2]

delete both partitions, do a 'zerofill' (using a third party proggie), that will really wipe it clean, it leaves the disc in 'raw' format, then reformat it to FAT32 one whole partition.

don't give up, it is pretty easy with the right tools...

good luck...

laterzzzzz..........

[morphid]

The smaller drive probably contains (or has contained) propriety software and drivers for the device. Quite common with branded USB memory sticks. You'd probably have better luck accessing it with a partitioning tool in a non-windows environment, and nuking it from there. Although you could always try diskpart from a command prompt. Open a command promt, and type:

diskpart <enter>

list disk <enter>

This will list all connected disks, and hopefully display your USB memory stick as 1 single disk. If this is the case, select it by entering the corresponding number. !!Careful not to select the wrong disk and accidentally wipe a HDD!!

clean <enter>

create primary partition <enter>

select partition 1 <enter>

format quick fs=fat32 <enter>

active <enter>

After that exit command prompt, unplug memory stick and plug it in again and it should show up as a single drive. Give it a shot and see how it goes.

[Ephemeron]

morphid: I tried, but it only showed one disk (my hard disk) when I typed in 'list disk'.

Edit: I tried it again with a different computer. It gave me all the disks, but it showed the memory stick as two drives.

[Steve R Jones]

Diskmgmt.msc shows drives in two sections. Top and Bottom...I bet if you look in the bottom section the drive in question is ONLY there ONE time and it shows two partitions. (the top section would show Two Partitions.)

So, in the bottom section - if you right click on "each" partition you will see a Delete Partition option....Delete both then righ click again and select Create Partition.

[Ephemeron]

No, I am referring to the bottom section of the Disk Management panel. Strangely it seems to be two comletely separate drives in the same device. What kind of electronics manufacturer would do this?!? (Integral)

Anyway, I tried the diskpart application to delete the unwanted drive. I think I deleted the volume. Unfortunately the 'break' command wasn't available. But I have been able to make it so that the unwanted drive just acts like a device with nothing plugged into it.