Hi all, I have been playing around with trying to recreate the password logon feature that came with my flash drive (SanDisk cruzer, U3 software) where they have the usb drive partitioned. I have tried to use several programs to do this. One actuall killed my computer, gave me a unrecoverable “Unmountable Boot Volume” blue screen error when I tried to restart windows 
I just wanted to know if anyone has had better luck with partitioning a usb drive under windows?
Ideally what I would like to have is 2 partitons, one small 10 mb unencrypted one with truecrypt on it and the rest of the other 7.5gb as an true crypt encrypted volume.
Any suggestions?
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Once upon a time, I've used the embedded partitioning tool in Puppy Linux (live cd) for stuff like that, it worked. I've tried with several windows software also, without any success :(.
since it doesn't work portably.
Any linux partitioning utility will allow you to partition the drive. No windows one will.
This is because, by default, Windows will NOT allow you to see more than one partition on a drive that is classed as a "removable drive" To get around this you can install the "USB Hard drive" driver instead of the "USB Flash Drive" driver for your drive. This involves creating a custom .inf file for the driver with the specific device id of your drive, and installing that driver on every single machine where you want to access the second partition. This is an extremely non-portable solution.
I've even tried just using the second partition just for truecrypt, as you are planning, but the windows OS layer simply denies that the drive is a partitionable entity, so truecrypt just cannot address it to use.
Edit: if you really want to, then there are instructions at the bottom of this page : http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html
You right, unless i find a way to recreate the Sandisk virtual drive its not going to be possible for me to do this... But it is possible, because they have done it... so there is no reason why i cant.. i just need to keep doing my research and asking around...
The "Hitachi Microdrive" filter-driver works perfectly ..
..but since you have a U3-drive why don't you make your own
custom ISO with all the truecrypt program-files and a
autorun.inf and "burn" it to the CD-device of the U3-drive ?
That way there is no need to mess around with special device-drivers .
Another solution is to identify the controller-chip used
by your UFD and then hunt down the tool used to set it up .
Virtually all the production-tools I've worked with can
change the Removable Media Bit so windows sees the drive as
"Fixed",allowing you to format/partition the device like you want .
I don't think it is possible to burn an iso over their one. The only option would be to find a tool that will allow me to recreate what they have done. but at the moment it isn't looking good
as i cant seem to find anything anywhere that will allow me to do this.
This may be obvious to you, but you could just format the USB drive as one partition and create an encrypted disk file that took up most of the space. I don't think there's any practical difference in security or performance.
No there wouldn't be any difference, just having the 2 partitions and one as a virtual cd is just a more elegant solution...
What is everyone using to protect their information on your flash drives? What other options are out there?
I found the U3 lauchpad removal tool at the sandisk site and removed my U3 partition altogether. From what I understand, Sandisk has an agreement with Microsoft for another flashdrive application and the U3 isn't going to be promoted any further. I erased my partition, put TrueCrypt on it as traveler disk, with a 5 mb alotted to truecrypt and the other 950 mb allocated to a volume, drive f:, where my portableapps menu and apps reside. And yes, I know about admin privliges, I don't
have an answer, but this works for me. Anyway, you can adjust your unencrypted area and encrypted volume, just by adjusting the size of your truecrypt volume. This is my 2 cents worth....it works for me.
The organization that I work for has recently mandated (and distributed) Kingston Data Traveler - Secure Privacy Edition to their employees.
You can Google it to find out the detail specs on it. But essentially it sets up two virtual drives (much like U3 does) one is a fake CD-ROM drive that loads the software to map the encrypted second drive. It is virtually indestructible and as far as I can tell 100% tamper-proof.
Therefore, you do not need to use something like TrueCrypt (which requires admin access to the PC that you connect to) in order to secure your data in case your USB stick is lost or stolen.
There is another product (I have never used) called, Iron Key that I believe is comparable to the Kingston DT - Secure Privacy Edition.
The only downside is that the read/write performance is not as good as the GT Voyager that I had been using, so I have had to sacrifice speed for security-- not a bad trade-off but in my case it was mandated by my employer.
I still can run all of my PortableApps so life is still good and now I no longer have to worry about losing my USB stick and having my personal and professional data compromised.
-IP
This somewhat dated thread may interest you.
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?s=&showtopic=14564
Ed
Under windows it isn’t possible to view two partitions on a flash disk… SanDisk have done it with some special drivers. If you have a look, windows sees it as two drives.
I did find one article http://www.mcgrewsecurity.com/research/hackingU3/ which is about spoofing the u3 update to install your own custom iso, but it no longer works as it wont accept your custom iso.. I think I may have to hunt down the version of the updater that the article uses.
If I manage to get my hands on it and get it to work, I will post it back here…
Thanks every one…
I know to a certain extent this is a roundup of what everyone else has already said, but I thought it might be helpful to have a single and relatively complete answer. I'll try to edit it to contain other suggestions if they come up.
Windows Vista actually does support multiple partitions on a flash drive. However, if you insert the drive into an earlier version of Windows, it will only see the first partition.
Earlier versions of Windows do not support multiple partitions on removable media. You can cheat your way around this in XP in two ways. (1) by manually installing a driver for the drive. If you insert the disk into a PC without this driver loaded, you will only see the first partition. If you only use your drive on a limited set of computers that you have admin rights for, this is viable. Instructions are online at http://www.msfn.org/board/A-Multiple-Partition-USB-Stick-with-Mult-t69211.html#entry474505 (2) by using a utility to reset the "Removable Media Block" for your drive- google the name of your drive with "RMB utility". Use some caution and do your research before pursuing this method, as it could render your drive into a paperweight.
If you have a u3 disk, you can replace the u3 software with your own launcher- smithtech has this pretty well covered with this article & utility
The other way (and probably the simplest) to accomplish what you really want out of this is to format the drive as NTFS and create a 7.5GB TrueCrypt container file. This is probably the "safest" method, although TrueCrypt itself requires either admin rights or that an admin has installed the TC driver.
format the drive as NTFS
While NTFS is an excellent file system for hds I don't recommend it for USB flash sticks. It adds additional writes to the sticks that FAT32 would not add and can reduce the life of the stick and speed of file processing.
I'll try to edit it to contain other suggestions if they come up.
Sorry, once someone replies to a posting editing of it is disabled. Or at least it use to be in the prior version of the sw. Too bad, it was a nice idea.
Ed