Real hot USB flash drive deal (works as 1 flash drive + 1 CD-ROM)

[metalmania]

Cliff notes:

1. Phison chipset USB flash drive is easy to make a CD-ROM+flash drive.
2. You want a bootable USB-CDROM in your flash drive.
3. Get Kingston and Apacer brand (be careful).
4. 8GB $16, 16GB $32, not bad.

All the USB flash drive manufacturers have their "mass production" tool. In theory you can make all USB 2.0 flash drives act as a CD-ROM and a flash drive. However until now, only the flash drives that using Phison chipset (UP10, UP11 and UP12) have the easiest way and compatibility.

Both Corsair and Sandisk use their own chipset. It is very hard to do it. Kingston and Apacer use Phison chipset a lot, however Kingston also uses Skymedia chipset. I successfully made a 4GB Kingston Data Traveler to a CD-ROM+Flash drive, also a 4GB Apacer AH321 and a 16GB Apacer AH321.

It is 100% sure that Apacer AH321 is using the Phison chipset. For Kingston, the product from 2007 is more likely a Phison chipset flash drive. You can use a small program "Chip Genius" to determine the chipset of your flash drive.

Why do you want to make a CD-Rom+Flash Drive? Because you can burn the bootable image file to the CD-Rom portion and boot your computer as a USB-CDROM. I know many computers can boot from USB-Zip or USB-HDD, but USB-CDROM is almost 100% successful.

You can use a Windows PE in the CD-Rom, with your favorite tools. If you like, you can get the Norton Ghost inside. I remember Norton Ghost costs about $30 or something. This CD-Rom solution is a great choice for system maintenance or deployment.

Did I forget to mention that you can still use the rest portion of the flash drive as a normal flash drive? What I did is put a Windows PE as the bootable CD-Rom about 120 MB, so I have 3.7GB free space left for the flash drive portion.

Is it legal to use the mass production tool? It is leaked from the manufacturers, I did not see any terms and conditions. But you have to use it at your own risk since it might damage your flash drive. It is widely used to diagnose and fix the drive problem too. Actually there are a bunch of options you can do to your flash drive, CD-Rom function is just a little bit.

As for now, I only know you can buy the Apacer AH321 from supermediastore, apply the 30% off coupon, you can get the 16GB for $32, 8GB for $16. Sometimes they change their prices.

This is just an option, especially if you don't have a CD-Rom drive on your computer.
If someone is interested, I might put the production tool and guide on rapidshare.

moved from Hot Deals.
moderator allisolm

 

[IlllI]

not sure if this technically belongs in the hot deals forum, but its good information.
however what tools does one need to convert to a flash cdrom drive? you go to great lengths to explain why it would be good, but dont say 'how' to do it

 

[Old Hippie]

If someone is interested, I might put the production tool and guide on rapidshare.

I'll go for that. :thumbsup:

 

[metalmania]

http://rapidshare.com/files/158455348/USB-MPT.rar.html

OK, I don't think many ppl have interest but I just wrote a guide and put the tools together, uploaded to rapidshare. It can be downloaded 10 times. After 90 days it will be deleted.

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: metalmania
http://rapidshare.com/files/158455348/USB-MPT.rar.html

OK, I don't think many ppl have interest but I just wrote a guide and put the tools together, uploaded to rapidshare. It can be downloaded 10 times. After 90 days it will be deleted.

Here's a RS mirror good 'till Jan. 9th.

OP, what's this reports file in here? If you're Steve, I know all about your flash drive. :laugh:

 

[hclarkjr]

this is kind of unneeded for modern motherboards as they can boot to flash drives. i have a 4gb flash drive that i made bootable and loaded vista onto it so i can install with it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is this the same kind of thing as how U3 works? And will this tool allow you to remove/re-add U3 support?

 

[metalmania]

Originally posted by: Old Hippie

Originally posted by: metalmania
http://rapidshare.com/files/158455348/USB-MPT.rar.html

OK, I don't think many ppl have interest but I just wrote a guide and put the tools together, uploaded to rapidshare. It can be downloaded 10 times. After 90 days it will be deleted.

Here's a RS mirror good 'till Jan. 9th.

OP, what's this reports file in here? If you're Steve, I know all about your flash drive. :laugh:

I did not notice that. It's OK, just the history of my production process, nothing important.

 

[metalmania]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Is this the same kind of thing as how U3 works? And will this tool allow you to remove/re-add U3 support?

Similar. There is a MP tool for U3 flash drive called "Universal Customizer", but it is a hacked version, I tried that on a Sandisk U3 4GB, I could get the CD-ROM, but it's not bootable even the ISO image is a bootable image.

 

[alaricljs]

If someone is willing to send me this mass production tool, I can host it. No point in buying the card unless you can get the tool, and I haven't found it anywhere else as yet.

 

[metalmania]

Originally posted by: alaricljs
If someone is willing to send me this mass production tool, I can host it. No point in buying the card unless you can get the tool, and I haven't found it anywhere else as yet.

the rapidshare link above is not working?

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: metalmania

Originally posted by: alaricljs
If someone is willing to send me this mass production tool, I can host it. No point in buying the card unless you can get the tool, and I haven't found it anywhere else as yet.

the rapidshare link above is not working?

only one of them is.

 

[alaricljs]

I did finally get it, and as mentioned I'll post a more reliable link tomorrow.

At work I am behind a very well used firewall and it took me ~6 retries (at "wait about 12 minutes and try again" per try) to get the file since rapidshare was already being hit by someone else. I suppose patience and persistence are virtues or something

 

[El Norm]

whats the point of the cdrom emu? i was able to put windows pe 2.0 and it boots without any cdrom emulation.

 

[alaricljs]

Boot the WinXP *installer* that way and see if it works (it doesn't, although there are hacks to make it work).

 

[alaricljs]

Okey, followed the guide with the software downloaded from RS link above.... it don't worky

Anyone want to help me? When I go to the 4th step: Run ?F1_90_v189.exe? I load my ini and hit "Get Info" I get "No Drive Found" in a dialog box.

I got the Apacer AH320 16GB stick from SuperMediaStore:

Chip Vendor: phison(??)
Chip Part-Number: UP10~UP12


Thanks

 

[bigbangtech]

I get the same error with "No Drive Found"

 

[samboy]

Another vote for the:-

"No Drive Found"

For the SuperMediaStore AH320.

Anyone have updated software or recommendations for this?

 

[commandojoe]

After seeing the deal posted under hot deals, I ordered 3 drives, but then started wondering if similar methods could be used on the flash drives I already have. So I did some searching and there are tools that give you options on many different flash drive controller chips. I have 3 Corsair Voyagers (4,8,16 gig) - the 4 gig uses a Profilic controller, and the 8/16 gig drives use an SMI controller. you can use Chip Genius to try and figure out what chip your drive has (Hopefully).
Chip Genius couldn't recognize my 4 gig Corsair, so I looked at the markings on the controller chip and Googled them to determine the manufacturer.

If Chip Genius can identify the controller, it will provide a link (To a chinese forum) with download inks to the tools for your controller - but you have to sign up for the forum to use them - just note the file name and follow this LINK and find the manufacturer of your chip to get the appropriate tools (You can also get Chip Genius and the Phison tools mentioned by the OP there.)

The software is different for each mfg, so you will have to play around with it to see what you can do.

On my SMI Corsairs (8/16 gig) I was able to load a CD-ROM image, but I couldn't find a way set up the remaining space as another drive. It may be possible, but I haven't figured it out yet since there are quite a few options and the documentation that comes with it is somewhat sparse on how to use it.

One useful thing I was able to do is set them up to be recognized as hard drives instead of removable drives. Before I changed them to act like a hard drive, my Xbox 360 wouldn't recognize them at all - now they work perfectly.

And just for fun I pulled out an old 128mb Lexar flash drive to see what I could do with that, but chip genius couldn't identify it, and the chip inside was labeled as Lexar which has nothing available on the website above - I was able to set it up with to be bootable and load Hirens Boot CD (with 4 megs to spare), but that will probably only work on newer computers that have a USB flash drive boot option...

The flash drives I ordered from the hot deal have arrived at my family's house in the US, but I'm working out of the country for an extended period of time. Once they are forwarded to me I'll post back here with my results. I'm hoping to be able to load TinyXP (Which also comes with Hiren's Boot CD and DSL Linux live integrated...) as the CD-ROM image and have the rest of the space as a regular partition...

I'm not an expert on any of this, but if you have any questions, feel free to reply or send my a PM and I'll do my best to help out and share what I do know.

 

[commandojoe]

Well, I finally got my drives shipped to me...

Chip Genius gives the following info:

Chip Vendor: phison
Chip Part-Number: UP11~UP14

Tried to follow the directions but got the same message "No Drive Found" as everyone else.

I took off the cover of the drive and the controller chip is actually an SMI324BC
And the program I used to work on my Corsair drives with the SMI controller recognizes these as well...

I'm not sure why chip genius says it is a phison though - back to square one...

 

[PluX59]

Hello,

I tried the 'howto' after downloading it, and I got a problem (maybe the same as the "No drive found").

My USB Stick still displays a 0 (empty) medium. I tried to repair it whith "USB Flash Disk Formatter" (v2.9.1.1) and get a "Device info block corrupted, please return via RMA" message.

I also tried the "Phison Preformat" (v1.30) to low level format my USB stick, and I got a "Preformat error!" message.

The stick seems to be completely screwed

My question is: is there another way to repair my stick, than the "Phison Preformat" and "USB Flash Disk Formatter" tools ?
I tried the utilities from the archive (F1_90_v189.exe and F2_v189.exe) with no more success :/

For information, the controller is a "Phison PS2136" chip, displayed as "Phison PS2134" with "Chip Genius" (v2.72).

Thanks per advance for more information

PluX59
P.S: Sorry for digging out this topic, I hesitated between reply and create a new topic...

 

[jigarpatel22]

I also have similar problem like "PluX59"

My Corsair Voyager 8Gb is by mistake written with vid=1307 and pid=0163 using UT165 (MFPT) software

Now it shows as removable media and 0 bytes size.

I want to restore it back. I also have SMI Production Tool, but Scan USB hangs the application.

UT165 (MFPT) software is now not able to update usb it is giving 0x28 error. also showing some bad blocks in stick.

i also have alcormp but my device is not showing in alcormp.

Tell me what to do ?