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How to format a flash drive for Windows 7 not to create a Recycle Bin on it?

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trust
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How to format a flash drive for Windows 7 not to create a Recycle Bin on it?

Along these lines: https://superuser.com/questions/76707/how-do-i-get-windows-7-to-not-use-...

But from the standpoint you only have control of the flash drive not the Windows system:

My observation is that if I plug in an MP3 player/Kindle/Smartphone, Windows will not write a Recycle Bin on the drive.

Plug in a flash drive, you will be presented the Recycle Bin. Sad Any way to prevent it?

ottosykora
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removable bit

there is something called removable bit. By this, the controller tells the host that the drive is of the removable variety. This is normally stored in the controller.

There were some utils around for some specific drives which did alow to flip the removable bit.

The reason why people tried to hack the flash drives was that if the removable bit was changed, the drive appeared as fixed drive and windows was able to read more then one partition on it.
Did you ever use some utility like this on your flash?

Otto Sykora
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trust
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No

Actually I heard about this from you first.

A newbie friendly step by step guide would be helpful if it's worth doing. Thanks.

Ed_P
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New drives for Windows 8

Windows 8 has a new standard for flash drives requiring them to be made as Fixed rather than Removable for Windows To Go use. I suspect the Fixed ones are getting the Recycle Bin folders.

While there use to be apps and hacks to switch Removable drives to Fixed so they could be partitioned in Windows I'm not aware of any such way to switch the new Fixed drives to Removable.

What format is your drive? FAT?

Ed

ottosykora
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have no w8 so did not know

So do I understand it right, there are new drives on the market which are by default set as fixed?

Or what media can be used for that?

So far I did not meet such drive, all my once are removable so far.

And yes, the dusty bin comes only on fixed drives, it is not created on removable media.

Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland

Ed_P
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USB drives set as Fixed

Ed

ottosykora
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I see

OK, I read little bit in net, yes this seem to be the problem and OP has one of those sticks.

So trustu, if you have one of those new sticks for w8 to go, you should use them for that rather then for other things.

For flipping the removable bit, personally I also do not believe this is possible with those special devices for w8.

Step by step, well this did never exist, as this was dependent on the type of controller the device had build in. Then one had to search in net for suitable software for it. For some devices one had to find low level controller programming tools which is rathr difficult.
For some controllers there used to be even some GUI software, but often did not work.

So search in net for 'flip removable bit' or similar. There is no single and simple way for that.

Otto Sykora
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trust
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Pls. do not complicate :)

Guys, how much do you think is the chance I am talking about a special USB flash drive (which by the way consist of less than 0.1% of the market) without mentioning it? Wink

No, I have simple USB flash drives. (I did not talk about one drive, either) To cut out your interlude and back to my original question:

I put in my Kindle, MP3 Player, Smartphone to my Windows machine - nothing (no Recycle Bin) is written on them, unless I want to write on them.

How to achieve this same state with any basic USB flash drive for not any windows XP, 7, 8, whatever operating system automatically write on them, from the USB flash drive, so I am a guest on given computer? In simple terms, pls.!

I appreciate you.

ottosykora
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in simple terms

The device has to appear in the windows as removable drive.
Then it has no recycle bin.

If it does not appear as removable drive, it appears as fixed drive, it will get recycle bin.

Simple as that.

You will have some difficulty to change that behavior as this is done by the manufacturer of the device.
This can not be changed by simple formating or other simple operations from the windows file system. It needs to get access to the controller of the flash device with set up software for that particular controller.

There is no simple way, unless you search internet for software allowing you to 'flip removable bit' specific for your device.
If the device was cheap, then the solution is to get other device which is marked as removable.

Otto Sykora
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trust
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Hm.

Very interesting, thank you!

trust
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I have to add

I have to add that to this new 2 GB German stick, factory formatted to FAT16 (not even FAT32, I just checked) no Recycyle Bin is added. For drives I format with Windows a Recycle Bin is added.

Maybe the secret here is to format the stick with a special software? By no means this one is more special hardware than my other sticks.

Ed_P
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hmmmm

Maybe the secret is for you to not format USB sticks. :-o

The factory format is that of a Super Floppy; no MBR, no partition table, no cluster alignment. When you format with Windows you get all those things whether you format as FAT32 or NTFS or exFAT.

The only reason I will format a USB drive is to make it bootable or to change it's format to NTFS to support image backups.

Ed

ottosykora
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not exactly

supper floppy will not have MBR, but it will have partition table a kind of otherwise it will not work at all.

By formating on windows, no mbr will be created regardless of what file format you create.
A valid mbr has still to be produced separately and copied to the stick by dedicated software.
Some drives being 'initiated' by windows will get mbr, but usb sticks do not need to be initiated and will not get it automatically.
There is a way on soime windows to have an mbr copied to a stick not having one, by producing a DOS bootable media, in such case the mbr is copied from a file which has to be present on the computer somewhere.

And even when usb stick was partitioned under let say linux, and mbr added, still windows will find and use only the first partition on the device with file system readable by windows. And also in this case, the device will be read as removable and no recycle bin will be created for that drive.

In fact I personally do format each stick in my personal use before first usage, just to have at least little bit of known state to start with. I know I am not able to delete anything in hidden blocks by that, but well this is something I have to live with.

Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland

ottosykora
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how does it report?

How does your stick report to the windows?
Does it report as removable or fixed?

All usb sticks, regardless of formating did so far to me report as removable device, no matter how many times or in which file system I format it.

So check with right click on properties of the device how does it report.

What you have here is very strange stick definitely, there were times I would pay good money for a stick reporting itself as fixed, as most sticks are very difficult to persuade to do so.

What make is it?
I think I would be still happy to find a stick able to report as fixed and producing recycle bin just by formating it. Such stick can also be partitioned and this can be very valuable for some experiments.

Do you have access to linux or some partitioning utility to enable you to make more then one partition on that stick?
If so, and if you create two let say FAT32 partitions on it, will windows see them later as two partitions and assign probably two drive letters or will you still see only one partition?

Otherwise try to google for: removable bit or flip removable bit etc, you can read there abt the relative complexity of the problem.

BTW: we used to have in this forum at some time very active member RMBfixed
He is a kind of expert on this, may be you can use the serach function to find number of his threads to this subject.

Utility:
one of the utilities coming as windows GUI is called Lexar BootIt.
Try with this and see if you can flip the removable bit to what you want to have it.
Temporary solutions in some cases were to flip the bit on the file system, but this did mostly last only until next power on/off of the usb device. This was due to the fact that the controller did set it back to what was written in the controller firmware itself.

You can also try some of the procedures here:
http://superuser.com/questions/391176/flipping-the-removable-media-bit-a...

Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland

VirtualVirgo
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Overthinking?

I may be misunderstanding what trustu is looking for, but in the name of security I had added a blank 'file' called recycler- I read somewhere that this will stop programs from sending things there; I can also infer this from FreeFileSync which warns me that the Recycling Bin is not available for the drive I'm trying to sync to.

However, the drive is already formatted and was before I put the blank file in place.

So the file serves as a sort of 'substitute' Recycler, and was placed on my drive via a USB autorun virus protector whose name escapes me right now. It's attributes are Hidden (H) and Archive Angel It's difficult to test how effective it is against a true malware attack (There is also a blank Autorun.inf with the attributes Read-only, Hidden, System, and Archive.)

They(Recycler file and Autorun.inf) seem to work well, to summarize, but may not be quite what you're looking for? I'm not sure?

[edit: the program is called Renjith USB Autorun Virus Protector (Open source, public domain, freeware)]
VirtualVirgo

shanepreston
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Format a flash drive

Basically in Windows 7 we have found multiple features and even more features are also added in Windows 8. As a Windows XP user I have found certain old features that is still helpful for me; as well known with the fact that Windows 7 is provide beneficial user friendly experience to us and in Windows 7 we can handle different section such as format a flash drive, format a particular drive and many other format process.

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