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I have a generic USB drive which has password protection, and I want to stop this password protection mechanism and to use it as a normal 8GB USB drive.

I received this USB drive as a gift in Hong Kong, and there was no instruction menu whatsoever, not even the manufacturer name.

When I plug the drive in Windows XP, the removable drive comes up as a read only 5.28MB partition with two files. When I try to add or remove any files or formatting it, it will says the drive is write protected.

After launching the Login.exe and typed in the password, a 8GB read/writeable partition will be shown, and I'm free to do anything to it. But once after the drive is unplugged and replugged, the same read only partition will still comes out no matter what I did to the hidden partition.

Anyone knows about this kind if USB drive? What did the manufacturer do to hide the partition? Is there a way to "low-level" formatting this drive to convert (or revert) it to a normal drive?

Before typing in the password:

alt text

alt text

After typing in the password:

alt text

alt text

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  • You could try accessing it from a Linux system - run fdisk and it should list the hidden partitions.
    – caliban
    Sep 3, 2009 at 4:14
  • Nice usb drive , where can i get it form ? dont want to buy the ironkey !
    – TeAmEr
    Feb 26, 2011 at 11:56

3 Answers 3

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A very tricky one and not that sure...

Can I have a model, make or anything a bit further to help.

I had a similar model from a trade show and I found that the application that does the locking was very unsecure, I resource edited it and basically remove the error box, so upon entering the program, I just pressed enter and it unlocked.

However, on a friend's one, the section was write protected and we were unable to do the same method

There many thousand of manufacturers and devices, without knowing a lot more, there is not a answer that fits all.

It would be interesting to see that dll file and see how it "unlocks" the drive.

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  • I may try resource edit. But if the files are write protected, can resource edit modify the exe and dll files?
    – deddebme
    Sep 3, 2009 at 5:35
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The HardForum has a thread on Deleting up hidden partitions.
Do take a data backup of the USB before trying these things.

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  • The hardforum link is about hidden partiton in harddisk only...
    – deddebme
    Sep 3, 2009 at 5:33
  • #deddebme, Have you tried checking your USB accesses with the tools referred? I have used GParted comfortably while working with a flash drive.
    – nik
    Sep 3, 2009 at 5:41
  • I am a bit hesitate to try, will GParted permanently render my USB drive useless by erasing the partition table?
    – deddebme
    Sep 3, 2009 at 14:58
  • I tried GParted today, but it can't modify the read only partition in the USB drive.
    – deddebme
    Sep 17, 2009 at 22:54
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What you're looking for is the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. It can perform low-level format of a USB disk drive.

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