Jump to content











Photo
- - - - -

Reasons for flipping the Removable bit of a USB Flash Drive?

removable bit usb

  • Please log in to reply
2 replies to this topic

#1 agni

agni

    Frequent Member

  • Tutorial Writer
  • 270 posts
  • Location:Bengaluru (Bangalore)
  •  
    India

Posted 09 March 2012 - 11:06 AM

I have come across a number of discussions related to flipping the removable bit of USB Flash Drives.

I found some reasons why a user would want to flip the removable bit.Are there any more advantages of flipping the RMB?
  • Partition the USB Flash drive and access the various partitions simultaneously.(Without flipping the bit , a UFD can be partitioned,but all partitons cannot be accessed simultaneoulsy.They can be accessed one by one using USB_Part_Flip.exe or Bootice.)
  • Write Protect your USB Flash Drive - http://reboot.pro/13899/ .The write protection works only for Fixed disks and not for removable media like UFDs.

The above benefits can be achieved without flipping the RMB by using a filter driver like dummydisk.sys or cfadisk.sys.

So why would a user want to flip the removable bit?
Are there any more benefits of flipping the Removable Bit?

#2 steve6375

steve6375

    Platinum Member

  • Developer
  • 7566 posts
  • Location:UK
  • Interests:computers, programming (masm,vb6,C,vbs), photography,TV,films
  •  
    United Kingdom

Posted 09 March 2012 - 11:17 AM

Some BIOSes only boot removable media as a floppy or ZIP drive and this can mean it fails to boot some OS's. If the UFD appears as a hard disk it has a much better chance of booting.

#3 ambralivio

ambralivio

    Frequent Member

  • Advanced user
  • 195 posts
  •  
    Italy

Posted 09 March 2012 - 12:54 PM

Agni,

besides steve6375's correct comments, please take into consideration that while you're right saying :

"The above benefits can be achieved without flipping the RMB by using a filter driver like dummydisk.sys or cfadisk.sys"

the main problem with these drivers is that they need to be already installed in the system you want/have to boot.
Therefore, the portability of a bootable flash drive is arguable with them.

Ambralivio





Also tagged with one or more of these keywords: removable, bit, usb

1 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users