Some time ago I was given a free USB stick. If I connect the USB stick to my PC, it shows up as two drives: one drive is 2GB, the other is 14MB, holding a few files belonging to the company who gave the stick to me.
I'd like to erase the entire stick, so it only shows up as one drive in explorer.
Using computer management, I cannot delete the partition from the second disk (the option is grayed out). I tried using Diskpart, but when I try the delete partition command, I get an error (cannot execute command because of an I/O error).
I also tried PartitionMagic on Linux, but with the same result. I can do whatever I want with the first partition on the first disk, but I cannot delete the partition on the second disk.
Basically I have two questions:
- how have they created this second disk/partition?
- how can I remove this second disk/partition?
Thanks!
Edit: to clarify, the USB stick shows up as two separate drives. Here's an image of the partitions on those drives:
1 Answer
Your screenshot shows that it actually appears as two drives - as opposed to two partitions on a single drive - so there's nothing you can do. The USB device presents itself as a USB hub with two flash drives connected to it (you can confirm this using UsbTreeView). There's no portable way to merge them into one, because under normal circumstances partitions can't span across multiple disks.
You could try to delete the second partition using more advanced software such as diskpart (command line, built into Windows) or GParted (graphical, Linux only). Windows Disk Management imposes some artificial limitations that could make it seem impossible, but other tools may work just fine. However the second device will still appear under Disk Management. It's also possible that entire second drive is protected in firmware and can't be altered.
