Windows 10: Is it possible to create multiple partitions on a USB flash drive?

It could work, if you run it as Administrator to have full access to required resources. I'll try it and let you know...

EDIT: No, it didn't work. In the readme file it says from Windows XP, maybe doesn't work for newer Windows versions, let alone Windows 10. Nice try, thanks. I suspect that I have to hack some key in registry, but I wouldn't like to make my USB Flash unreadable is something goes wrong...

 

Hi,

I very much doubt that would work.
It's a hardware related problem so the controller chip on the thumb drive needs to be manipulated.
BootIt didn't work for me either although it said it did the job..

The only drives that will work right out of the box are the ones that are certified (and there are many more not listed) as a Win to Go drive. (any thumb drive that registers as a basic disk and not a removable one as Topgundcp correctly pointed out.)

Sure, there's also ChipGenius which does a great job at telling you all about your drive ands sends you to the software you need to flip the controller chip but.....It's a lengthy procedure, most site are in Chinese and to top it all off, you may ruin your drive in the process.
Bottomline I gave up since I have a Win to Go ready pendrive already anyway.

I wish vendors would be more specific regarding this so you could pick the right pendrive for your needs.

Cheers, *Wink

 

Thank you all guys! Not that I will need it frequently, but it would be good to separate a USB Flash drive in partitions for different uses. In the mean time, once I won't need the installer anymore, I'll just format the whole drive again and that's it.

 

Maybe this can be of use?

Recently I bought a 128GB Flashdrive.
I want to use it for a quick backup of my files therefore it needs to be NTFS formatted.
But since I also would like to use it for my music in my car, it would be nice to have 2 filesystems on the flashdrive.
I've solved this problem this way.
I created two partitions (15GB for FAT32 and the rest of the space for NTFS)
Now first I asigned the Fat32 partition as primary.
Now windows recognizes this part and I store my most favorite music on it. (15GB of Music is quite something)
After that I return to my partition manager and set the NTFS-part to primary.
Now Windows recognizes the NTFS-part and I can store my backups there.
I can't see my FAT32 partition anymore in Windows, but the audiosystem in my car does stil see it.
When, after some time, I want to put new music to my Flashdrive, I change the assignment and temporately make my FAT32 partition primary again.
Regards,

 

It should work. You must have overlooked something. Here is a guideline that might help'

Lexar BootIt Tool - Format Tool

 

Thanks WHS.
For now, I can live with this workaround.
I don't think windows will be able to see my flashdrive as 2 different drives, would it?
When you can tell me how to do that, I will try it abslolutely!!

regards,

 

As mentioned in an older post in this thread, it depends how the drive is configured. If it is recognized as a USB Flash drive, Windows can only see one partition. If it is recognized as a USB mass storage device (USB hard disk or SSD) then you can treat it like any internal hard disk drive (multiple partitions). If only there was a way to change that and make a USB flash drive be detected as a USB hard disk...

 

Hi,

I've tried just about anything I could find but none of it seems to work.
That said, some of that stuff that emulates a removable drive "might" work on a 32 bit system. I just could be bothered to load one just for that purpose.

Also, these tools that can flip the RMB may work if you happen to have the right brand of drive. This is highly unlikely as most of this stuff is rather old.

The only USB drive I have that I can partition any way I want is a Mushkin, which is basically a SSD built on top of a USB controller. These are of the expensive kind though.


Cheers, *Wink

 

There is no trick there, if it is an SSD, it is always seen as a mass storage USB device. The point is to make a regular USB Flash drive be detected as a low capacity SSD.

 

Made an account just to share that this thread helped my specific case, and that my solution may help spapakons need as well.

I purchased a 128 GB flash drive that i wanted to generally use as a flash drive but also boot Ubuntu when needed. I did not want to have live disk files mixed with everything else, so i partitioned and ran into same problem as you that windows did not like the second partition.

So... I switched the partition order. Made the NTFS into the first partition on the disk (most of the space, works with everything, works with large files), and a second 8GB partition FAT32 for the live disk (and a third partition for 2GB swap as well). Windows recognizes the NTFS, and i do not need to access the live disk from windows. And booting from the USB works so far with no special effort on the single computer I have tried *Smile.

So, I suspect your use case is not that different than mine, but i could be wrong. Hope it helps!

 

Hello!

It is a good idea, but I had already created the Mac OS installation in the flash disk. I would have to use a utility that supports HFS partitions to move the partition to the end of the drive and then create a FAT32 or NTFS partition at the start. I don't know if this is possible and if doing that the USB remains bootable to install Mac OS or troubleshoot Mac OS startup. Anyway I have deleted that flash drive, so I cannot check it. Thank you for the suggestion. I'll have it in mind next time, if the relevant utility would allow writing the Mac OS data on a second partition instead of formatting the disk.

 

Did you install Ubuntu onto this partition or just save the ISO file there?
Did you have to set the partition to primary?

 

Well I know you can create two partitions in a Flash drive using a Linux utility (eg Gparted). I could then format one as HFS to create a bootable Mac OS installer and the other as FAT32 or NTFS to use with Windows. I have used Aparted for Android to create a second partition formatted as ext4 (for Linux or Android) to a micro SD card, so I can use the second partition to move some Android applications from my Android smartphone to the card (with Link2SD or similar utility). This allows me to install much more applications than the available internal storage capacity of my smartphone. In a smartphone or tablet supporting OTG, one can also connect a USB Flash drive and create multiple partitions, but doing that in Ubuntu using Gparted is much easier. You don't need to install Ubuntu, just boot from a Live CD.