[H-GEN] can you partition USB drives?

[Karl.]

[oops - I tried to post from non-subscribed address - hopefully that 
attempt will be rejected by the mailserver]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 10:34:15AM +1000, Troy Piggins wrote:
> I was considering installing some portable apps on a USB drive
> (like Putty, gVim etc) that are Windows based, but then was also
> thinking about installing Damn Small Linux on the same USB drive.
> Is that possible to do?  Can you partition them like hard disks,
> giving each one a different filesystem?

Under linux, no problem - they can be partitioned just like a normal 
hard drive.

Under windows, it's more complicated.
- USB flash drives have the 'removable' bit set, and windows will refuse  
  to recognise extra partitions on them (but first partition works 
  fine).  
  
- USB hard drives work just like normal - partition as much as you like.  
  Windows will kindly offer to reformat non-FAT/non-NTFS partitions for 
  you, if you try to access them.  (although you can install an ext2/3 
  driver so that windows can access those partitions)


My main USB flash drive has 3 partitions 
- 1st is FAT (with Damn Small Linux and various other things installed, 
  including portable apps)
- 2nd is ext2
- 3rd is encrypted ext2

It all works as it should under linux, but windows only ever sees the 
first partition and appears to be completely ignorant about the rest.  


Karl.
-- 
http://mowson.org/karl