Important update on dealing with the "fixed" vs removable drive issue...

**SFiorito** · 01-05-2006, 07:27 PM

Guys, while keeping up with Dietmar's thread on USB booting I saw that he mentioned something called the Hitachi Microdrive Filter driver from XPe Files....Turns out it's a filter driver that makes any removable drive appear as fixed to XP. This means any drive (either external or with an adapter) can be partitioned or formatted ad NTFS. More importantly this takes care of the ACPI issues we were having with the ExtremeIII cards!!! I just tested this on my ExtremeIII card installed in a USB CF card reader.

To get the driver go here: http://www.xpefiles.com/viewtopic.php?t=92

Unzip the files and open the cfadisk.inf file. In the [cfadisk_device] section add a line for your device. You'll have to do this by opening up regedit and going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum and from there it depends if it's a USB drive (USBSTOR), IDE (IDE), etc. You need to copy the HardwareID registry value for your device.

For my USB CF card reader it was located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\U SBSTOR\Disk&Ven_Generic&Prod_______________CF&Rev_ 1.6E\0000001&0

So in the INF file I added the following line:

%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\DiskGeneric_______________ CF1.6E

Then you just go to the properties for that drive and manually select a newer driver and install the cfadisk.inf drive. That's it...So now if you want to use an ExtremeIII CF card (or any other card for that matter) you can simply install this driver and you're set.

**NeoMatrixJR** · 01-05-2006, 09:40 PM

aw man! and I JUST installed my ultra II...oh well...it's just money right?

**SFiorito** · 01-05-2006, 10:16 PM

lol....you don't want to know how much money i've spent on mobo's and flash drives...

yet i still don't have a system installed in my car yet!!!! i just have fun screwing around with XP and get distracted easily....

**NeoMatrixJR** · 01-05-2006, 10:30 PM

Wow dude, all those posts and no system IN the car...Somebody give this guy a hand!

**SFiorito** · 01-05-2006, 10:53 PM

it's because i keep coming up with "newer and greater" ideas...that and I'm just trying to do waaay too much...custom frontend, more work on my old XP System Builder app (I'm actually doing some work on that now and I'm sooooo close to making some pretty cool things possible), plus school, work, girlfriend, so on...I actually didn't get a chance to do anything since September because this semester was kicking my ***.

**SFiorito** · 01-05-2006, 11:33 PM

uhhhh.......well.....it looks like maybe i got ahead of myself....because my system still freezes with the fixed disk filter when I try to use ACPI Standby....

that totally sucks!!!

but, on a good note I'm booting my system from my ExtremeIII CF card in the USB card reader! Dietmar's instructions are a lot easier than they seem. I'll post up a registry file to make things easier tomorrow. i'm gonna try it out on an actual USB thumbdrive eventually....

**SnyperBob** · 01-05-2006, 11:51 PM

Very interesting info, thanks SF - your posts are always an inspiration for those of us that play with XPe

**knubile** · 01-13-2006, 09:40 AM

So what would the process be to install a system with this?

1. Install on a regular hard drive as usual.
2. Setup this new filter
3. Image to CF card.

Is that it?

**SFiorito** · 01-13-2006, 05:32 PM

more or less, yeah. you would still need EWF though if you're using a flash drive of course. the nice thing is that this opens up the possibility of using the other EWF modes on "removable" drives (hidden partition with the overlays, instead of RAM-REG mode).

**ramy_zohair** · 02-06-2006, 10:10 PM

So overall, its better getting an extreme III instead of the ultra, or are there any downsides of using Extreme. (is it more difficult to get it as a fixed drive)