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1/ Is it possible to create a hybrid USB drive? Needs to be functionally the same as a hybrid CD : Mac sees only mac partition, windows sees only windows partition... bonus if they can share files between partitions just like a hybrid CD can.

2/ I have an .iso of a hybrid CD. Is it possible to 'dump' this image onto a USB drive somehow ... and obviously make a hybrid USB drive?

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The first thing I can think of that would somewhat fit your description is to partition the drive so that one partition is an HFS+ partition and the other is NTFS. Both of them are viewable only from Mac OSX and Windows, respectively.

I would guess the reason nobody thought of making this for a USB drive is either because USB Flash drives are meant moreso to carry data and not programs, removing the barrier between OS's, and then because it's not too much of a hassle to carry two flash drives of two different colors.

As for burning a hybrid cd to a flash drive, it's very well possible, but your mileage will vary since from a driver level, both Windows and Mac will identify a USB flash drive as a flash drive regardless of the filesystem. You may get a U3 drive (which includes virtually all of Sandisk's drives) with Universal Customizer (alternate link) to put the hybrid iso into the fake CD partition. Only U3 drives have this ability; it's a part of their firmware/drive controller.

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  • Thanks for your reply; Yeah i started out the NTFS/HFS+ route... made the NTFS partition hidden in OSX with 'SetFile -a V' - it works ok but isn't ideal, but may be my only real solution. That U3 sw looks very interesting; unfortunately i don't have the correct usb drive for it.
    – boomshanka
    Sep 11, 2010 at 2:17
  • May I recommend this $7 Cruzer?
    – digitxp
    Sep 11, 2010 at 13:00

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