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from the its-my-way-or-the-highway-said-the-Borg dept.
An Anonymous Coward belatedly writes:
"Sandisk changed the configuration, beginning in 2012, for all USB drives they make so that in future external USB devices will be seen as physical hard drives. This has been done to meet requirements set by Microsoft for Windows 8 which states that all USB devices must be configured to be recognised as fixed drives (nb. this is possibly related to Windows-to-Go). This has caused havoc for many users as Sandisk drives can no longer be used with Windows Recovery or any program that will only write to USB External devices. Sandisk deleted the support page that described why Sandisk USB drives are now configured as fixed drives, although the blog author includes it in his blog.
Beware any USB pen drive which states it is "Windows 8 certified". The device will not be detectable as an external drive in Windows 8. The HP Recovery Disks page says to avoid any Windows-8-certified USB devices."
One comment on the blog suggests that Sandisk might have reverted to more conventional practices for subsequent USB devices.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheLink on Monday March 03 2014, @02:19AM
I don't see why Microsoft has to require the USB drive to look like a fixed drive for their Windows To Go stuff to work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go [wikipedia.org]/ products-and-technologies/devices/windowstogo.aspx [microsoft.com]
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enterprise
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @07:40AM
Because Windows 8 will only create a single partition on external devices and Window To Go requires multiple partitions
(Score: 5, Insightful) by quitte on Monday March 03 2014, @07:48AM
Holy Shit. That explanation makes so much sense! Microsoft would rather talk all USB fob vendors into changing one bit than fixing their Partitioning tool.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Vanderhoth on Monday March 03 2014, @07:55AM
That's what MS does. They have an overwhelming market share (especially in enterprise) so they can tell hardware companies how it is. If a hardware company wants their product to work on Windows, they'll do what MS tells them to. Otherwise a hardware company's competitor will be the choice product, and MS may decide to make "support" for company A's product difficult.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 5, Informative) by mojo chan on Monday March 03 2014, @10:01AM
Actually the problem is with BIOS vendor's code. If the disk appears as an external device the BIOS will try to boot it in a different want to a fixed disk. The BIOS expects external drives to have one partition in a very specific format, not suitable for Windows To Go.
Microsoft had two choices. They could hack around getting Windows To Go working with the old single partition system, but it is considered legacy and depreciated. Alternatively they could ask vendors to produce compatible drives and mark them as Windows 8 compatible, but in doing so break everyone else's code and violate the USB spec. I'd have preferred the former option.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @11:40AM
They could also have chosen a third route: Only certify computers as Windows 8 compliant if they can boot from multi-partition external disks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @11:00AM
I don't think it's so much they don't want to fix their partitioner as it is the UX-guys and the users causing problems. If multiple partitions could be created easily in Windows, hilarity would ensue, as the set of removable usb device owners, and Windows users, not actually trying to use WTG, intersected. I can see it now. 63 extended partitions, followed by a call for support for a "broken" flash disk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @11:09AM
s/extended/logical/g, because morning
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Monday March 03 2014, @07:50AM
I'm betting it's not about making Windows-To-Go work, it's about making the competition not work. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I hate to sound conspicuously theorist, but to me this looks like MS trying to force it's will on the useful peripherals market to make sure useful peripherals don't work with other OSes the way they should so MS can claim Windows is the only "compliant" OS.
Just my opinion though.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by marcello_dl on Monday March 03 2014, @09:42AM
Technically it's not EEE, it's walled gardening, increasing the hassle to switch to different OSes, even if they are windows themselves.
If you think of the problem in terms of what can we done with freer OSes, the problem itself is ridiculous.
Get USB device, does it mount with USB storage? Yes, mount it wherever it suits you to backup with whatever program. No, return it as incompatible/faulty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @08:35AM
I don't understand why the Windows 8 Recovery program can't be installed on a 'fixed drive' ... but there you have it. Think about this for a moment. The Windows 8 Recovery disk can be over 10Gb. That is 30 times the size of the first hard drive I purchased with my own money *flashback* Wow! I how fast this will be in the 486? */flashback*
Other than it wipes the drive.. it should at least have the option of using any 'drive' as a target for making a backup with. Who knows, someone may have an old drive lying around they want to use as a Recovery drive.