An Anonymous Coward belatedly writes:
"Sandisk changed the configuration, beginning in 2012, for all USB drives they make so that in future external USB devices will be seen as physical hard drives. This has been done to meet requirements set by Microsoft for Windows 8 which states that all USB devices must be configured to be recognised as fixed drives (nb. this is possibly related to Windows-to-Go). This has caused havoc for many users as Sandisk drives can no longer be used with Windows Recovery or any program that will only write to USB External devices. Sandisk deleted the support page that described why Sandisk USB drives are now configured as fixed drives, although the blog author includes it in his blog.
Beware any USB pen drive which states it is "Windows 8 certified". The device will not be detectable as an external drive in Windows 8. The HP Recovery Disks page says to avoid any Windows-8-certified USB devices."
One comment on the blog suggests that Sandisk might have reverted to more conventional practices for subsequent USB devices.
(Score: 1) by marcello_dl on Monday March 03 2014, @01:42PM
Technically it's not EEE, it's walled gardening, increasing the hassle to switch to different OSes, even if they are windows themselves.
If you think of the problem in terms of what can we done with freer OSes, the problem itself is ridiculous.
Get USB device, does it mount with USB storage? Yes, mount it wherever it suits you to backup with whatever program. No, return it as incompatible/faulty.