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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03 2014, @11:44AM
The windows 8 internal key is to prevent people from installing one version of Windows 8 on other machines
WHY anyone would WANT to do such a thing, or than being highly negative evil or just plain callous, I do not know
(Score: 4, Informative) by TK on Monday March 03 2014, @02:35PM
Use case: I buy a laptop with Windows 8 on it. Five days after the warranty ends, the motherboard fries. I say "screw it", I'll just build a new desktop PC. In theory, I still own a valid license for Windows 8. In the bad old days, I would be able to borrow a friend's OS install disk, use the license key printed on the bottom of my laptop, and go on my merry way.
Unfortunately, now I have no way of getting that license key, and am forced to buy a new license/copy. I have a problem with that.
Disclaimer: I would never buy Windows 8.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum