How to remove a partition on a USB drive?

Question

I got a free promotional USB stick that I want to format for my own purposes. When I inserted it, it automatically opened a browser and launched a web site.

I have since disabled autoplay on this computer so that nothing launches when the stick is inserted. But it still shows up as two separate drives, and one of them is a "CD Drive" that I can't format.

How can a USB stick contain a "CD Drive?" And more to the point, how can I remove this partition using Windows XP or Ubuntu?

Update

I previously asked for an XP solution, but finding none, I have tried Ubuntu, also without success. Gparted doesn't see the "CD" portion as a device at all, and from bash, any chmod changes I try tell me that the file system is read-only. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Sounds like this is a customized U3 drive!

U3 is a technology that, along with functioning as a normal USB data drive, also can emulate a CD-ROM station.

The virtual CD-ROM partition can not be modified normally, and is not "burnable" in the traditional sense. However, it can be modified and even disabled with specific tools.

To remove the virtual CD-ROM drive, you would need an U3 uninstaller available at http://u3.com/uninstall [broken link, redirects to a different domain]

You should also be able to remove it under Ubuntu, with the help of http://u3-tool.sourceforge.net/ (I would recommend trying the latest version, the one that came from the Ubuntu repositories did not work on my U3 USB stick)

A note of warning though: The u3-tool above is not guaranteed to work on your specific drive, and may (though it has not happened to any of my drives before) mess it up. Use at your own risk. I would recommend using this as a back-up if the official U3 uninstaller does not work.

Answer 2

use the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool to format the USB drive and remove all partitions.

Answer 3

Use control panel->admin tools->computer management->local storage as you woudl for any other drive

Answer 4

Remove it with the Windows (2000 and higher) Disk Management tool.

You can't have a CD drive on the USB stick. It just shows up that way so you can't add or remove any info on that partition. Basically having it labeled as a CD drive makes it read-only.

You can also boot up a Linux live CD, or other boot disk with gparted. Use gparted to remove the extra partition and merge it into the other one. Keep in mind not all boot disks will let you see USB drives, though, to edit the partitions.

Answer 5

Use the HP program for flash disks located at: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool.shtml

If you can't find it there, google for "hp usb disk storage format tool". It is the HP format utility for flash disks, but works on any brand of flash stick. It automatically, as part of the format process, removes partitions.