- Nov 20, 2009
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I know this sounds silly, but I had a history of using Sandisk USB thumb drives until they arrogantly got into bed with Windows 8. That bed relationship caused Sandisk to change the bit in their firmware to make the USB device appear as 'fixed' instead of 'removable'.
This can be a problem for those like me wanting to use some simple tools for creating USB-boot thumb drives. While fixed disks can be booted, too, (naturally), because they are seen as fixed they might not be treated as operating system installation media.
BTW, there is a Sandisk thread about this and it seems that Sandisk stopped doing this, but didn't give a way for consumers to determine in advance if items they are buying might be of certain inventory generation to know if they are getting product with the firmware bit set one way or another.
This can be a problem for those like me wanting to use some simple tools for creating USB-boot thumb drives. While fixed disks can be booted, too, (naturally), because they are seen as fixed they might not be treated as operating system installation media.
BTW, there is a Sandisk thread about this and it seems that Sandisk stopped doing this, but didn't give a way for consumers to determine in advance if items they are buying might be of certain inventory generation to know if they are getting product with the firmware bit set one way or another.