Legit Reviews

So I got a free 2GB USB drive with my Sapphire 4850 (that I got not to long ago), and 304MB of it is taken up with promotional stuff.

The problem is that its split formatted as a USB stick and virtual USB CD/DVD drive, and as such the promotional things on the CD/DVD bit are read only.

Are there any tools that would allow me to see the whole of the USB stick and wipe and repartition it as the 2GB drive it should be?

Windows disk manager sees them as being separate, and GParted only sees the USB stick side.

It's a shame that I've lost so much capacity, but the worst bit is that every time you plug in the USB stick you get the Sapphire splash screen loading up from the virtual CD/DVD bit.

Dan

yea, i got one just like it from a mining company over here was recommended to use G Parted but never got round to it. If you find out how to do it within windows i'll be all over it.

If you can't do it through Win Disk Manager, then I'd try knoppix and blow it out from there.

I decided to crack open the drive to see what the chips and things were inside.

Turns out it was a USBest UT165-L64 controller (Showed up as USB007 mini-USB2BU USB Device in device manager if anyone has the same). Some googling turned up the company website and I was able to find out that they supply a utility with the controller chips to enable the CD drive emulation autorun (amongst some other options).

So off I went to see if anyone had hold of this utility.

I managed to find it on a German forum (thanks Google translate!), and the download link they gave is:
http://www.thrudragon.nl/UFDUtility.rar

Long story short is that it worked!! It let me reformat the whole drive, and take out the USB CD thing. Great news is that you can then use the space that was the USB CD before. If for some reason you want to add your own virtual cd drive, you can!

It comes complete with user manual, and I think it only works on the USBest controller chips, so you may as well give it a go and see if it can help you out with your ad-loaded USB drive.
*disclaimer: try at your own risk*

Dan