How-To Geek

Posts: 33

Hi.

My problem is that I bought SanDisk 8GB USB drive with U3 Smart on it and it created Local drive O: (200MB) as a system drive which I cant get rid of. There is no delete volume option in disk management.

Please help.

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Posts: 20002

Uninstall it in Device Manager. Reboot.
See if you can now delete it in Disk Management.
If yes, do so and reboot.

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Medicius

Posts: 33

I alredy tryed that but there is no input of this local drive in device manager.

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Posts: 20002

What right click options do you get in Disk Management ?

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Medicius

Posts: 33

Oh... my mistake I wrote it wrong. Its actualy a partition as Local disk O: Sorry about misleading you.
It looks like this when I try to delete it:

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

ScottW

Posts: 6609

Medicius, notice that the O: volume is on "Disk 0" which is a 120 GB Basic disk. This is NOT your flash drive! You do not want to delete that partition which is the System partition for Vista.

If your flash drive is on the list, it would say "Removable" instead of Basic similar to Disk 2, and the size will be just under 8 GB (around 7,4 - 7,6)

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Posts: 20002

ScottW. A system partition of 200MB ?
Have you seen this sort of setup before ?

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

ScottW

Posts: 6609

LH, yes I have seen it. As I understand it, the partition marked "System" in Disk Management contains the Vista boot loader and BCD data store. These items don't take up much space at all. The C: partition, above, has all of the Operating System files for Vista.

Here's another example that seemed odd at first. In the system where I dual boot XP and Win7, when I am booted into Win7 the XP partition is still marked as System.

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Posts: 20002

ScottW. Thanks. In my head, I knew it was possible. I've just never seen it in reality before.

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Medicius

Posts: 33

ScottW I dont agree because as I mentioned in my first post the Local disk appeared (was created by USB) after connecting a new USB drive wich auto installed U3 Smart utility. I did manage to remove that utility from USB drive but I dont know hot to remove Local disk O: which is like stain on a wall that doesn`t go off. :(

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

ScottW

Posts: 6609

I've heard horror stories about U3 flash drives, and this is another one. I would not let one of those U3 devices within 10 feet of my system!

Medicius, you did not have that 200 MB partition before the U3 drive was installed? I wonder how U3 would move and resize your C: partition to make space for this new partition? That's hard to do even when you are an administrator!

Try removing the drive letter with Disk Management, so that this O: drive won't show up in Explorer. The way it stands now, you can't just delete that partition without losing the ability to boot Vista. To completely remove that partition, the C: partition would have to be moved left, made the active partition, and have the bootloader installed on it.

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Medicius

Posts: 33

Thank you ScottW. I removed letter and it dosent show up in Explorer but is still showing in a Disk management tree. Obviously there is no other way. :(

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

ScottW

Posts: 6609

Medicius, there are lots of articles about how to uninstall U3. The whole U3 concept has drawn a lot of criticism.

Anyone who is interested in U3 removal should start at the source and follow the removal instructions from u3.com.

Posted 4 years ago #

Top

Medicius