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from the its-my-way-or-the-highway-said-the-Borg dept.
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: 2, Informative) by etherscythe on Monday March 03 2014, @05:56PM
Incorrect, although you sometimes have to work at it a little harder (definitely not as intuitive as previous Windows versions, for sure). Standard Win8 DVDs generally are designed specifically for either Core or Pro edition. It is possible to change the source files so that it does not automatically choose the edition for you. One easy way to do this is to use RMPrepUSB [rmprepusb.com] with the Easy2Boot [easy2boot.com] package - it has xml files that pass parameters to the ISO on a bootable flashdrive that bypass this, and can be configured with a number of options. Alternatively you can remaster the ISO if you've got e.g. UtraISO.
There is also a utility [startpage.com] for retrieving the key from the BIOS in case it is not picked up automatically by Windows. Just make sure you check the MSDM key option or you will get the temporary install key rather than the proper BIOS key.
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