Saturday 1 April 2017

Windows 10 Creators Edition brings major change for Removable USB drives!

As recently mentioned by Akeo (Rufus author) on reboot.pro here, The new Windows 10 Creators Edition seems to have changed the way it handles Removable USB drives!

Previously, Windows XP/7/8/10 would only mount one partition on a Removable USB drive. However, now it seems to treat a Removable USB drive almost the same as a Fixed-Disk drive and you can assign drive letters to multiple partitions (if they exist) on a Removable USB drive!

This is a big change, so this may well cause problems with all sorts of USB-friendly apps!

Tip: To see what version of Windows you have, use the WINDOWS+R key chord and type WINVER in the Run box...

To further confuse the issue, although Explorer may show some volumes with their assigned drive letter, the diskmgmt.msc utility does not show the drive letters (!) - see the two partitions of a ChromeOS Removable GPT USB stick with multiple partitions here...



I also found diskmgmt.msc to be unstable! After unplugging and re-connecting a few different USB drives, it crashed!

Also, the top panel seems to refresh itself every 15 seconds or so, which is rather distracting.

Let me know if you find any USB problems with Build 15063.

P.S. If you connect an E2B USB drive, it will prompt you to format the small hidden partition (which no longer seems to be hidden!). You can cancel the format box or just format it to stop Windows asking you to format it each time you connect it! If you do format the 2nd partition, it will confuse Disk Manager though as it will not be displayed as a formatted partition and have no drive letter (looks like a Windows bug!).

P.S. This is NOT an April Fools joke!



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