Admin 15.06.2014 - 10:13 Tips
Today, the cost of USB flash drives is still quite high. And a drive with a capacity of 128 gigabytes will cost the user approximately 5,000 rubles. In comparison, a 500 GB hard drive (form factor 2.5”) will cost in the range of 1500 - 2500 rubles! Naturally, the preferred purchase will be the purchase of an external hard drive, or its independent configuration ...
How to build an external hard drive?
The benefit of self-configuring the device is obvious. This is not only an individual selection of external and specifications, but also the opportunity to save money using an existing hard drive.
So in the situation described below, we managed to get by with “little blood”. There is a hard drive - 320 gigabytes, removed from the laptop due to replacement with a larger device. We buy to him a "box for hard drives”(case, pocket, etc.), which costs quite inexpensively, from two hundred rubles and more. This is followed by the assembly process, which takes 5 to 10 minutes.
If you are unsure of the success of self-equipment, then you should contact the experts. For example, inquire about the possibility of assembly at the place of purchase, or trust service center.
Steps for building an external hard drive:
Connecting the drive to a computer:
The resulting drive, connect to the computer by means USB cable supplied with the box. One end (micro-USB) is inserted into the corresponding connector on the box panel, and one (or two) into free USB ports your PC;
If the hard drive used in the drive was previously installed in the laptop, as in our case, then the installation will not require any additional steps. Operating systems of the Windows family older than XP version automatically recognize controllers of this type. If you completed the drive with a new hard drive, then you will need to at least format it (often, no additional steps are required, since the factory hard drive is ready for use after connection).
Most models of boxes for external hard drives are equipped with an indication marked as "LED" (it can display the connection - constant light, or intermittent - reading and writing information). Besides the boxing panel can have additional functionality. In our case, this is the “Backup” button, designed to start backing up the specified directories or files (with the software).
P.S.
That's all, it took no more than 15 minutes to start copying the data to the assembled disk. I hope you managed to assemble your external hard drive with a minimum of time and effort.
updated: 06/25/2016
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wd-x.ru
External storage do it yourself. USB drive from a laptop hard drive.
Introduction. Most laptop owners sooner or later face the problem of lack of hard drive space. As a rule, laptops up to and including 15 inches do not have a free second slot for a 2.5 inch device. Therefore, owners are forced to think about either replacing the laptop itself, or replacing its hard drive. After replacing the hard drive, the old drive always remains, which can be easily turned into an external one. USB stick for data transfer. Naturally, you can purchase a mobile 2.5 inch HDD and turn it into an external drive. Fortunately, the cost of external drives allows this. For example, at the time of writing, a 250 GB mobile hard drive costs $40, while a 500 GB device from WD costs only $45.Decide on the type of hard drive.
In fairness, it should be noted that an ordinary desktop 3.5-inch hard drive can also be turned into an external drive - you just can’t call it mobile anymore. If you have an unused 2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drive, then first of all you need to determine the type of its interface.
There are currently on the market the following types interface: IDE(ATA) and various SATA options. As a rule, all SATA interfaces are backward compatible with each other, and we will not dwell on their variations. The situation is completely different between IDE and SATA interfaces, which are absolutely incompatible with each other and have different connectors.
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The figure shows two hard drives with different interfaces. Winchesters have a mobile format of 2.5 inches. On the left is a hard drive with a SATA interface, on the right is a hard drive with an IDE interface.
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In our hands was a 250 GB hard drive from Western Digital of the Scorpio Blue series with a SATA interface. This drive has been in use for a long time. Acer laptop, but its capacity was not enough, and it was replaced by a more capacious 500 GB solution.
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Despite long-term use, the hard drive did not cause any complaints, so it was decided to use it as an external mobile drive. To do this, it was necessary to find an external case for him, which we did. External case AGESTAR for 2.5 inch mobile hard drive. Computer hardware stores offer a wide variety of external cases for 2.5 inch hard drives. Their key difference lies in the following: - case material, - type of external port (interface), - cost. As a rule, various cases with USB 2.0 interface are presented in stores, cases with eSATA interface are presented in a much smaller number, and even fewer cases with their combination of USB 2.0 & eSATA. Several cases with a modern USB 3.0 interface were found on sale, but their cost exceeded the cost of the hard drive itself, so we did not consider them. The key difference between USB 2.0 and eSATA is the transfer speed. Using the USB 2.0 interface allows for maximum compatibility, as these ports are available on all computers. A significant disadvantage of the USB 2.0 interface is the low data transfer rate, which will not allow you to unlock the full speed potential of your hard drive. The eSATA port is more promising, but it is not common and is found only in expensive versions of motherboards, cases and laptops. The eSATA interface allows you to fully unlock the potential of SATA devices. The material of manufacture can also be very different. AT simple case, is plastic. In more expensive variations, an aluminum case with a leather case is included. The cost of external cases also varies. Most cheap option will cost the user 3 dollars, expensive versions will cost more than 100 dollars.
Purchasing a $100 case for a hard drive that costs less than $40 when new and is half the price once it's in use is wasteful to say the least. Therefore, for testing, we were given a case worth a symbolic 3 dollars - AgeStar SUB2P1.
Equipment and visual inspection AgeStar SUB2P1.
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From a device worth three dollars, we did not expect any miracles, both in terms of equipment and in terms of performance. The device comes modestly packaged in a package. The front wall of the device is covered by a cardboard box listing the key characteristics of the device. This is support for 2.5 inch mobile hard drives or solid state drives with SATA interface, the presence of a transfer interface USB data 2.0 and various color options.
In fairness, it should be noted that our suppliers have confirmed that they have not seen any other than the black color of this case.
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After opening the package, we were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the set includes an instruction manual completely in Russian.
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The case is completely made of plastic. There are paper stickers on the front wall indicating the model, which will be erased in any case, so we recommend that you immediately remove them from the surface of the device.
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The material of the case is soft black plastic, which does not smell anything, is uniform throughout its structure.
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The covers of the device come off in two different directions, which makes it easy to remove and install the hard drive in an external case.
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The two sides of the outer case are fixed with a plastic latch made from the material of the case. Thanks to the recesses on the walls, the lids are securely fixed and spilling a glass of liquid, or leaving the device in the rain, is unlikely to lead to any problems.
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The device is designed for SATA hard drives, which we have repeatedly emphasized. Inside soldered controllers with SATA ports for power and data transfer.
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On the side wall there is a mini USB port for data transfer and hard drive power supply. There is no additional port to provide power to the drive, which may cause some problems for users. With a weak power supply that lowers the voltage along the 5 volt line, you often have to deal with problems starting the hard drive. As a rule, connecting the drive directly to the port on the motherboard, and not on the case system block, the use of a high-quality USB cable allows you to forget about this problem.
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Sellers of computer components often talk about the presence of a USB data cable in the kit as an advantage of one or another external case or offer to purchase it separately if it is not. We advise our users not to pay attention to this, as a mini-USB-to-USB cable is usually found in almost every family and is often supplied with mobile phones. In our case, we successfully applied a stale data cable from mobile phone Nokia.
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The next step is to install the hard drive in the case. This is done quite simply - by light pressing. Most importantly, first rotate the hard drive correctly according to the SATA power and data ports located in the case.
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The absence of any protruding elements on the hard drive controller circuit allows you not to worry about its rear surface when transporting and using the device.
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Some users may argue that the plastic case does not provide adequate heat dissipation from the hard drive. Naturally, external cases made of aluminum cope with this task much more efficiently. At the same time, we should not forget that mobile hard drives do not have such a high power consumption to suffer from overheating, and in laptops, as a rule, they are not cooled by anything else.
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After the assembly of the device is completed, the stage of its testing and use begins. The power supply to the device is accompanied by the glow of the blue LED, which also symbolizes the user about the data transfer process. It should be noted that not everyone will have a smooth start with the created external drive. If the hard drive has already been used, it has been formatted and partitions have been created on it, you will not have problems getting started. It will be defined as a regular USB flash drive using the Plug & Play method. But for those users who have purchased a new hard drive without formatting and with no partitions, there will be a problem that will be associated with the absence of a drive letter in the "My Computer" tab.
To do this, you need to create partitions on the hard drive and format it. This can be done through various boot disks, but it's better not to bother and do it in the Windows operating system itself.
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To do this, you need to go to the "Control Panel" through the "Start" section, then visit the "Administrative Tools" section. In this section, select "Computer Management", where in the "Disk Management" tab you can partition and format the newly connected external drive. After creating partitions, formatting them, you will have access to them through the "My Computer" tab and you will be able to exchange with the drive, as with a regular hard drive. Test configuration. The assembled external drive was tested as desktop computer, on the base modern processor Core i7 and no less modern motherboard, and on an Acer Aspire 7730 laptop based on processor Core 2 duos. It should be noted that the level of performance on two various systems turned out to be comparable.
1. Data reading speed was tested in HD Tach 3.0.4.0
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It's nice to note that the external drive we assembled shows a much higher level of performance than the WD My Passport Essential external hard drive we tested earlier. The maximum data transfer rate was 34.3 Mb / s, and the average delay was about 17.9 ms.
2. Data reading speed in HD Tune 4.5.
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In the second synthetic test, we got similar data to the previous ones, which also turned out to be slightly better than that of the official WD My Passport Essential external hard drive.
3. The speed of writing files of 64 MB in HD Tune 4.5.
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Somewhat more valuable is testing close to practice, by writing 64 MB files. In this test, we got quite expected results, which were also limited only by the capabilities of the USB 2.0 interface. Separately, I would like to note that during the entire testing, the temperature of the hard drive did not exceed 35 degrees Celsius, while a similar hard drive installed in a laptop had a temperature of about 43 degrees. Therefore, users will not need to worry about the working conditions of the hard drive in this case.
4. Operating download speed Windows systems 7.
In the course of practical testing on the speed of loading the image of the Windows 7 operating system, we received similar results for other external drives with a USB 2.0 interface.
5. Evaluation of drive performance in Windows environment 7.
We tested the performance of the external drive we assembled using the Windows 7 operating system. To do this, in command line you need to call the command: "winsat disk -drive g -ran -write -count 10", where "g" is the letter of the drive under test in the system.
From the test results, it can be seen that the drive we assembled received a much higher rating than the factory WD My Passport Essential solution.
Conclusion. According to the materials of this article, it is clear that any mobile hard drive can be turned into a good external drive without any hassle. Especially for testing, we asked to provide us with the cheapest external case, worth $ 3. Three dollars allows you to get an excellent external drive from a mobile hard drive, at least for data storage. Not to mention the fact that the same external case facilitates the recovery of data from the hard drive of "dead" laptops.
Despite the fact that AgeStar products are criticized by many for their low quality, after many years of using it, I have only a positive impression of it. First of all, it is for a democratic cost. Marriage occurs in all manufacturers, even if AgeStar has a slightly higher figure than Thermaltake. But the latter has no analogue to the presented external case for three dollars and with a guarantee of 6 months. We award AgeStar products with a gold medal for the best performance/price ratio.
www.megaobzor.com
Turning a USB flash drive into a hard drive
Any flash drive can be easily turned from the point of view of Windows into a natural hard drive. That is, for the operating USB systems the flash drive will be perceived as a regular, fixed disk, and not as an external portable device. Why might this be needed?
This technique is described primarily for those who want to prepare a flash drive for Windows installation 7 from Windows XP using the DISKPART utility. The whole problem is that in Windows XP the DISKPART utility does not see the USB flash drive point-blank at all. Enter the list disk command for DISKPART even a hundred times, it is useless: as a result, we will be shown only available hard drives and nothing more.
Therefore, from Windows XP with using DISKPART You can't make a bootable flash drive with Windows 7 at all.
However, what happiness - this problem can be solved in a tricky way. Namely: we will turn the flash drive into a regular fixed disk. In other words, for Windows XP, the flash drive will become another hard drive. And then DISKPART will show the disk we need as a pretty one. Cool? Still would!
Such a transformation of a flash drive will be useful to you for other purposes, wherever instead of a removable hard drive you're thinking of using a flash drive.
By the way, are you wondering why the hell DISKPART does not display a USB flash drive at all? It's all about the RMB (removable media bit) descriptor written on each flash drive. It is because of him that Windows XP (and other Windows versions) perceive the flash drive as a plug-in device (i.e. removable device). It is enough to remove this descriptor and the flash drive will mutate into a hard disk, it will be displayed as a disk in the My Computer window, all file managers and generally everywhere.
A wonderful driver from Hitachi will allow us to make such a feint with our ears. Therefore, first of all, we need to download it, and then modify it.
Download Hitachi driver for USB flash drive
Unzip the driver archive and find the cfadisk.inf file. Let's open it. There is a lot of stuff in the file, but we need one section, it's called .
And it has the main line with which we do street magic. In the file, it looks like this:
Now all we need to do is to replace the selected part of the record with the identification data of the flash drive, which we will turn into a hard drive. And then we will change its name.
How to do it? First of all, plug the flash drive into USB port. Now open the Device Manager (for example, select Start > Run, type devmgmt.msc and press the key).
Expand the Disk Drives section, click right click click on the name of the flash drive and select the Properties command.
Click the Details tab. There, the Device Instance Code menu will immediately open, this is the code we need. Highlight the code with one click with the left mouse button and press the key combination to save it to the clipboard.
Well, then everything is simple. We open the cfadisk.inf file, find the section, in it the line that starts with %Microdrive_devdesc% and change the specified value after %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install to the one copied earlier.
In other words, you need to change the line highlighted below in bold to the one you copied. Then save the cfadisk.inf file.
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_JETFLASH&PROD_TS1GJF168&REV_0.00\A7B03577C3F1B5&0
Now change the name of the flash drive. At the very end of the cfadisk.inf file, we find the line Microdrive_devdesc = in the section and change the value in brackets to any other. Initially, the value “UsbToFix” is indicated there, you can leave it.
The most important thing is to install updated driver cfadisk.inf for our USB stick. To do this, click on the name of the flash drive again in the Device Manager window and select the Update driver command.
The Hardware Update Wizard window opens. Now step by step.
- In the first window, select the No, not this time radio button and click the Next button.
- Select the Install from a list or specific location radio button, click the Next button.
- Select the Do not search radio button. I will choose correct driver and click the Next button.
- Click the Install from Disk button.
- In the Install from Disk window, click the Browse button and select the driver folder where the cfadisk.inf file is located.
- Windows will ask you if you really want to install the driver, click on the Continue installation button and then on the Finish button.
Now the job is done and the flash drive has turned into a hard drive, cheers. Unplug it, plug it back in and format it. And now look: instead of a portable device icon, the flash drive will be displayed as a hard drive.
Well, that's all, the flash drive has successfully turned into a hard drive, and now it will become available for the DISKPART utility, or maybe you will find another use for it.
winddata.ru
How to connect a hard drive to USB
Suppose you have upgraded your laptop and replaced some of the parts with more powerful, capacious and faster ones. Everything is great, but you still have old parts that are still quite working and it’s a pity to throw them away. Of course, you can sell them online or give them away for free. But among them there is a little thing that may still come in handy and this is a hard drive.
Initially, I thought of writing instructions, but in fact it turned out that I got a review about using the device. I did not fix it, because I think this option will also be useful to our dear readers.
How to make a homemade external HDD from a hard drive
Some time ago I got a 500 GB hard drive from a laptop. But due to the lack of their own laptop, it turned out to be nowhere to install it, but just throwing a similar volume “until better times” - the toad crushed. And since a hard drive from a laptop is a box a little more than 5 centimeters wide and ~ 6-7 mm thick, a strong-willed decision was made by spending a minimum amount of money and time to turn this drive into a kind of 500 GB flash drive by putting it into special device called " External HDD pocket«.
To solve this problem, a 2.5″ HDD pocket was ordered in the online store SunBright (ME-945Q-TI) from a little-known Taiwanese firm Wellland for the price of only 15 evergreen dollars.
Here are its characteristics:
- Supported HDD types: 2.5″ SATA I/II HDD
- Connecting to a computer: USB 2.0 up to 480Mbps
- System requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 or MAC OS 9.0 or above
- one touch Backup: For Windows in USB mode
- Power supply: via USB cable
- The size: 129 x 77 x 12 mm (L x W x H)
- Production material: Aluminum
For a little thing worth "three kopecks" - more is not needed.
Delivered smartly, on the third day after placing the order was already in my hands.
Everything was in place inside. Namely, there were:
- the "pocket" for the hard drive itself;
- protective case made of young dermantine leather;
- USB cord with a dual connector for connecting a flash drive pocket to a computer;
- a small bag with two fixing bolts;
- disk with drivers (in case you stick your pocket on a computer with windows 98 🙂);
- and finally detailed instructions with pictures on one page. Painted (more precisely, painted) so that my illiterate great-great-grandfather would understand;
As you can see, everything is there, and nothing more. 
Pocket Completion
The quality of the pocket itself, on the one hand, pleased me with a solid aluminum case - strong, rough, very pleasant to the touch - fingerprints are completely invisible (unless you first eat cutlets with your hands), it looks good and business-like, but on the other hand, it was a little upset by the fact that that inserting a brand new hard drive into it is a little scary - no gaskets are provided between the delicate electronic “belly” of the hard drive and the metal insides of the pocket. To calm down, many enclose a piece of paper cut to the size of the bottom of the inserted disc. However, even without this, everything works without problems!
An annoying trifle is also the fact that the bolts for screwing the end cap are so small that in order to carefully screw them in, you either need to look for a suitable small screwdriver or have a richly equipped manicure set. 🙂
After assembly (it takes 3-4 minutes), you can take the cord and connect it to the computer with a special cord, on the "computer" side of which there is not one, but whole two USB plugs. This was done for the reason that a hard drive in a portable pocket is a rather gluttonous thing in terms of power, so it often happens that one connector is not enough for a full connection ( external hard drive not detected, crashing, unreadable, clicking). In this case, the second plug must also be connected. 
No programs or drivers are needed for the “pocket” to work, stuck it in, waited until the system detects the device. Well, then, as with a regular flash drive - the connected unit blinks cheerfully with a light-emblem and conscientiously stores the recorded data for six months already. 
About the One Touch Backup function (i.e., backup one button) I can’t say anything good or bad. Since there has never been a need for such a thing. (
Assembling the "pocket" Welland:
The procedure for connecting all the ingredients (HDD + "pocket" + bolts) is quick and quite simple according to the following scheme:
We take out the front socket with the board attached to it from the pocket (it is not screwed) and attach it to the hard drive. It is difficult to confuse here - since the connectors with “foolproof” and inserting them, for example, upside down is technically impossible without the use of a hammer and chisel: 
After that, you just need to push the resulting structure into the aluminum casing:
... and fasten with those two bolts that are in the bag: 
Everything. Pocket completed!
Have you purchased a new, fast solid state drive (SSD) and your old one is lying around? Give him new task and use it as an external storage device. To do this, you only need a case with a SATA controller; it is available for both 2.5" and 3.5" models. For the latter, a power supply is required, while compact drives have enough power supply through the USB port.
Labor intensity: average, costs: 600 rubles.
2 Mini NAS on router
In all home network need access to the same data? You don't need expensive and bulky network attached storage (NAS) for this - a USB drive can do this task if it is connected to your router. Newer devices are equipped with the corresponding port.
First you need to format the USB drive from under Windows OS in file system NTFS and then just connect it to the router. In this case, the latter must have a USB port and must support the appropriate functionality. Now by typing in address bar browser address 192.168.1.1 (or similar), you will be taken to the user interface of the router.
Go to the " USB settings | General access to a storage device" (for TP-Link routers, for other devices, the name of the menu items may differ) and make sure that the disk starts up.
To access data on your home network, it will be enough in Windows Explorer to type an address like "\\192.168.1.1\Volume1". A permanent connection is achieved by right-clicking on the folder you plan to allow access to and selecting Map Network Drive.
Labor intensity: low, costs: no
3 Flash drive instead of a password
There is also a practical use for a small USB flash drive. For example, when you sign in to Windows, you can unlock your computer without entering a password. To do this, you need the Rohos Logon Key tool (1450 rubles), Predator (650 rubles) or free USBLogon (http://www.rohos.ru/products/rohos-logon-free/).
After installation, you need to select the connected USB drive and configure the security settings. After entering Windows password flash drive is ready to go. Unfortunately, working with USBLogon is complicated by the German-language interface, but even without knowledge of German, it is easy to figure it out.
Labor intensity: average, costs: no
4 flash drive for emergencies
If the computer no longer works as it should, a bootable USB flash drive comes to the rescue. The Sardu tool (http://www.sarducd.it/) installs up to 20 different anti-virus programs on the drive and also provides various versions Linux and other first aid software.
> Training: in the left sidebar, the selected software is listed by category. Check the required programs. We recommend choosing multiple antiviruses and a Linux version (e.g. Ubuntu).
> Flash drive creation: on the right sidebar, click on the symbol with the USB drive. You can start creating bootable flash drive.
> Use in an emergency: to use a bootable flash drive in case of an "accident", you need to change the boot sequence from the drives in BIOS Setup.
In this case, you should set the boot priority from USB to HDD. Then choose from the list necessary program. Don't forget to revert your BIOS changes after "repairing" your computer.
A photo: manufacturing companies, racum/Flickr.com
Increase disk space Eee PC without any soldering will help not a tricky solution, namely, use the SD slot, as additional disk systems. In this case, the system will recognize it as a hard drive and allow you to install on it additional programs. I recommend using a SD HC - 8GB 6 series card, manufacturer to taste. As a result, we get +8 GB of "disk space".
Purpose: to make Partition Magic flash drive visible, Acronis Disk Director, etc. for creating partitions on a flash drive, including hidden ones, formatting and other operations.
Download Hitachi Microdrive mini hard drive driver. Unpack it into a temporary directory. We open text editor file cfadisk.inf
Find the section:
USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_&PROD_USB_DISK_2.0&REV_P
We connect the flash drive, go to the device manager. Right mouse click on My Computer → Management → Device Manager → Disk Drives. We find the flash drive in the list, open its properties, go to the Details tab. Select and copy to the clipboard (Ctrl + C) "Device Instance Code" (in windows se7en - "Children"). In our case, this is the line
USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_USB_2.0&PROD_FLASH_DISK&REV_1.00\7&138BF0DA&0
Let's edit the file cfadisk.inf. Replace the highlighted line below
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_LEXAR&Prod_JD_LIGHTNING_II&Rev_1100
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_JetFlash&Prod_TS1GJF110&Rev_0.00
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install, USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_&PROD_USB_DISK_2.0&REV_P
to the "device instance code" (xp) or "children" (se7en) of our flash drive, as a result we get:
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_LEXAR&Prod_JD_LIGHTNING_II&Rev_1100
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_JetFlash&Prod_TS1GJF110&Rev_0.00
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install, USBSTOR\DISK&VEN_USB_2.0&PROD_FLASH_DISK&REV_1.00
Device instance code string \7&138BF0DA&0 do not write down. Saving the file cfadisk.inf.
We replace the standard driver with Hitachi Microdrive.
In XP: In the device manager, in the properties of the flash, go to the tab Driver → Update → Install from a list or specific location → Do not search → Install from disk
In Se7en: In the device manager, in the properties of the flash, go to the tab Driver → Update → Search for drivers on this computer → Select a driver from the list of already installed → Install from disk
select file cfadisk.inf, ignore the message about the unsigned driver.
Doing safe extraction flash and connect it again. (note For SD, the procedure is optional)
That's it!! Your flash HDD is ready to go. Good luck!!!
When not enough free space on the hard drive, and it is impossible to free it, you have to consider various options to increase the space for storing new files and data. One of the simplest and available ways is to use a flash drive as a hard drive. Many medium-sized flash drives are available, so they can be freely used as additional drive connected to a computer or laptop via USB.
A regular flash drive is perceived by the system as an external portable device. But it can be easily turned into a drive so that Windows will see another hard drive connected.
In the future, you can install operating system(not necessarily Windows, you can choose among the "lighter" options, for example, based on Linux) and perform all the same actions that you do with a regular disk.
So, let's move on to the process of turning USB Flash into an external HDD.
In some cases, after performing all of the following steps (for both Windows bit depth) you may need to reconnect the flash drive. First, safely remove the USB drive, and then reconnect it so that the OS recognizes it as an HDD.
For Windows x64 (64-bit)
- Download and unzip the archive.
- Plug in flash drive and run "Device Manager". To do this, simply start typing the name of the utility in "Start".
Or right click on "Start" select "Device Manager".
- In branch "Disk Devices" select the connected flash drive, double-click on it with the left mouse button - they will start "Properties".
- Switch to tab "Intelligence" and copy the property value "Hardware ID". You do not need to copy everything, but up to the line USBSTOR\GenDisk. You can select lines by holding Ctrl on the keyboard and clicking the left mouse button on the desired lines.
An example is in the screenshot below.
- File F2Dx1.inf from the downloaded archive you need to open with Notepad. To do this, right-click on it and select "To open with…".
Select Notepad.
- Go to section:
You need to remove the first 4 lines from it (that is, the lines before %attach_drv% = f2d_install,USBSTOR\GenDisk).
- Paste the value that was copied from "Device Manager", instead of the deleted text.
- Before each inserted line, add:
%attach_drv% = f2d_install,
It should look like the screenshot.
- Save the modified text document.
- Switch to "Device Manager", right-click on the flash drive and select "Update Drivers...".
- Use the method "Search for drivers on this computer".
- Press on "Review" and specify the location of the edited file F2Dx1.inf.
- Confirm your intentions by clicking on the button "Continue installation".
- Once the installation is complete, open File Explorer, where the flash will show up as " local disk(X:)" (instead of X there will be a letter assigned by the system).
For Windows x86 (32-bit)
After that, you can partition the flash into partitions, install an operating system on it and boot from it, as well as do other actions, as with a regular hard drive.
Please note that this will only work on the system where you have completed all of the above steps. This is due to the fact that the driver responsible for recognizing the connected drive has been replaced.
If you want to run the flash drive as an HDD on other PCs, then you need to have an edited driver file with you, and then install it through the "Device Manager" in the same way as indicated in the article.