Dev.SN ♥ developers
Sections
Dev.SN
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, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Monday March 03 2014, @10:14AM
I though, we might have been past the days where MicroSoft was able to throw their weight around and effectively change the way something fundamental works for their own twisted reasons. I mean, they've been behaving themselves so well recently with IE.
Isn't the whole idea of USB storage to be hot-pluggable and what not? I really don't understand how this is a win. It sounds like just a stupid hacky workaround for a poorly thought-out restriction in Windows -- and we're all made to suffer.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @11:06AM
If you thought so, you didn't pay attention. One word: SecureBoot?