I have a password protected USB drive with hidden partition, how to convert to normal USB drive?

Posted by deddebme on Super User See other posts from Super User or by deddebme
Published on 2009-09-03T04:06:11Z Indexed on 2010/06/08 3:53 UTC
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I have a generic USB drive which has password protection, and I want to stop this password protection mechanism and to use it as a normal 8GB USB drive.

I received this USB drive as a gift in Hong Kong, and there was no instruction menu whatsoever, not even the manufacturer name.

When I plug the drive in Windows XP, the removable drive comes up as a read only 5.28MB partition with two files. When I try to add or remove any files or formatting it, it will says the drive is write protected.

After launching the Login.exe and typed in the password, a 8GB read/writeable partition will be shown, and I'm free to do anything to it. But once after the drive is unplugged and replugged, the same read only partition will still comes out no matter what I did to the hidden partition.

Anyone knows about this kind if USB drive? What did the manufacturer do to hide the partition? Is there a way to "low-level" formatting this drive to convert (or revert) it to a normal drive?

Before typing in the password:
alt text alt text

After typing in the password:
alt text alt text

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