Windows – USB stick appearing as hard disk drive, not removable storage device

external hard driveremovableusbusb-flash-drivewindows 7

I just plugged in a very simple 1GB USB stick from the office in hopes of making it a Fedora Live USB stick. For that to work, I need a removable storage device, or else it won't appear in LiveUSB Creator's list.

Explorer lists my USB stick as a hard disk:

USB stick as it appears in the Explorer

LiveUSB Creator indeed doesn't show it in the device list:

LiveUSB Creator doesn't see the device

Is there any way of forcing Windows to see the stick as a removable storage device?

Edit

From the device's properties window, I can obtain it's GUID:

Getting the device's GUID

With that, I can find the USBSTOR entry in the registry:

USBSTOR entry in the registry

However, when editing the Capabilities value to 4 (as implied by CM_DEVCAP_REMOVABLE) or 16 (as implied by the value of other USB stick entries), I receive the following error:

Error Editing Value

Cannot edit Capabilities: Error writing the value's new contents.

Best Answer

The problem, appears, is not Windows but the device itself. For some reason, the device is registering itself as a Mass Storage device, not a Removable Storage device.

A nifty program I found via this blog entry called BootIt solved the problem for me in a jiffy: simply switch on the "removable bit"! Unplug and replug, and you're set to go.

I understand there's a bloatware version of this program all over the internet. See if you can get version 1.07; that gets the job done.

Additional bonus of being able to switch the "removable" bit: you can partition your flash drive!

Related Solutions

Windows – the “Circle With A Vertical Line” icon appearing on removable disk icons

What you're seeeing is a custom overlay icon. Overlay icons (or icon overlays) are mostly transparent icons that are overlaid on top of a standard icon to display extra status or property information about that file/program/shortcut.

The most common overlay is the "shortcut" overlay. You'll recognize this as the white square with a blue curved arrow that is displayed at the bottom left corner in Windows 7. In Windows XP, another popular overlay icon was the "shared" overlay, indicating that file sharing has been enabled for a drive or folder. Other overlays include "locked" folders, the "UAC"/"Run as administrator" shortcuts and, I believe, "disconnected" network drives.

However, the one pictured in your screenshot is most likely a custom overlay installed by a program, such as the file/folder status overlays used by TortoiseSVN or the drive temperature overlays used by some hardware monitoring programs.

To see exactly what this overlay is, I'd open up regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
  \SOFTWARE
    \Microsoft
      \Windows
        \CurrentVersion
          \Explorer
            \ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

Or you can use the program linked to by grawity, which will actually let you enable/disable each overlay.

Just to be clear, the long codes you see in the registry are class identifiers (CLSID) used by COM objects to identify linkable resources within them. To actually see the location of the icon, you have to go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{whatever}\, which will give you the location of a DLL where the overlay is stored. This is why the app grawity mentioned is so helpful.

Otherwise, you'll need to use an icon browser to look inside the DLL. Though an easy way to do this without installing an icon browser is to edit a shortcut and select the DLL file when choosing an icon for the shortcut. This will list all of the icons stored inside the DLL.

Windows – How to identify USB-sticks that will appear as non-removable before buying

I'm late. Your projects probably over, but...

Do a quick search of memory stick vendors and contact there tech. dept. Simply ask them if there sticks, or stick in question, will appear as a fixed drive, or a non-fixed/removable drive on your system. Mention your system, and maybe take note of your BIOS options(regarding this stuff, if any - a possibility)

I agree that this feature should be addressed better...but often...vendors will do what they must to sell there product...ONLY. Pardon my personal venting.

Edit

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – the “Circle With A Vertical Line” icon appearing on removable disk icons

Windows – How to identify USB-sticks that will appear as non-removable before buying

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