• Hitachi Compact Flash Fixed Disk Filter Drivers
• Hitachi Compact Flash Fixed Disk Filter Driver Windows 10
• Hitachi Compact Flash Fixed Disk Filter Drivers

In this article we’ll show you how to make a USB flash drive or an SD card to be identified in the Windows as a common local hard disk. Probably, you may ask why it’s necessary? The matter is that by default Windows identifies all the USB flash drives and SD cards as removable drives that can’t be split into several partitions with the built-in Windows tools. And even if you partition the USB flash drive into two or more volumes using third-party utilities (say, in Linux), only the first partition will be available in Windows. Windows supports multiple partitions only for hard disk drives identified as local (i.e. non-removable).

Compact Flash Cards; SCSI Drives Fixed; FLASH2GUI Network Software; FLOPPYFlash - Floppy Drive Emulations. 3.5” 50 pin Fixed Disk Emulations. Creation Date +/-Product Name. Product Short description. CF2SCSI / SCSIFLASH-DISK Hitachi Disk Drive Emulator to CF. Filter Drivers – Removable Media as Fixed Disk in Windows. Run UFDasHDD.bat and replug your USB Flash Drive to make it appear as Fixed Disk. Might wanna make note though that the Hitachi Microdrive Filter Driver method only works for x32 systems, since the driver is x32 and no x64 driver exists (that I know of), and also that enabling.

RMB bit and USB drives

Windows recognizes USB flash drives as removable devices due to the presence of a special descriptor bit RMB (removable media bit) on each of the devices. If the system determines that RMB=1 when polling the connected device using StorageDeviceProperty function, it concludes that this device is a removable drive. Thus, in order to convert the USB-flash to the hard disk it is enough to modify this descriptor. You can do this directly (which is quite risky because of the differences in the device-specific hardware implementations, and not always possible), or indirectly – by replacing the response of a USB device using a special driver, which allows to filter out the information in the device response.

Connect the USB flash drive to any available port on the computer, then open the Disk Management console (diskmgmt.msc) and make sure that it is determined by the system as Removable.

Also you can view the type of device in the Volumes tab in the properties of the drive (as we see here Type: Removable).

Or using the diskpart command:

In this article we’ll take look at two ways to change the RMB bit on a USB stick: using the Hitachi filter driver (changes are made only at a specific computer on the driver level) and changing the removable bit in the controller firmware using the BootIt utility from Lexar (more universal way, but there is a number of restrictions and is not applicable to all models of USB flash drives and SD cards). Although both of these methods are quite old and I originally tested them in Windows 7, they continue to be relevant and work equally well in modern Windows 10.

Lexar BootIt Utility: Flip Removable Bit

Recently I got a pretty interesting tool – Lexar BootIt. This is a free portable program that can change the RMB of a removable drive and make a removable USB device fixed (or vice versa). Despite the fact that the utility Lexar BootIt is developed only for Lexar devices (Micron, Crucial), it can work with flash drives from other manufacturers. The BootIt utility supports all versions of Windows, starting from Windows XP and finishing with Windows 10.

You can download BootIt from Lexar website lexar_usb_tool.zip

• Run exe elevated
• Select your USB flash from the list of devices
• Press the button Flip Removable Bit
• Save changes by clicking OK.

Unplug and reconnect the device. Using Device Manager, make sure that its type has changed from Removable to Basic.

In the event that the BootIt utility did not help to change the RMB bit on a removable drive, try the following method based on the Hitachi Microdrive filter driver.

Hitachi Microdrive Filter Driver for USB Flash Drives

To mount a USB flash drive or an SD card as a hard drive, you need a special filter driver, which allows you to modify data sent via the system stack of the current device driver. We will use a filter driver for USB flash drives by Hitachi (Hitachi Microdrive driver), which allows to change the USB device type from removable to fixed (USB-ZIP -> USB-HDD) at the OS driver level. Using this driver, you can hide from the system that the connected device is removable. As a result, the system assumes that it works with a usual hard disk, which can be split into several partitions available in the system simultaneously.

Hitachi Microdrive Driver Files:

• Hitachi Microdrive version for 32-bit systems – Hitachi Microdrive x86 (2.9 Kb)
• Hitachi Microdrive version for 64-bit systems – Hitachi Microdrive x64 (3.6 Kb)

You need to download the version of the driver according to the bitness of your system. Both archives have identical structure and consist of two files:

• cfadisk.inf – is the installation file with driver settings
• cfadisk.sys – is a Hitachi driver file

The next step is to identify the device ID of your USB / SD flash drive. To do it open Device Manager and select the properties of your USB drive. On Details tab in the Device Instance Path setting, select and copy (Ctrl + C) the code for the device instance.

In our example this would be:

USBSTORDisk&Ven_Linux&Prod_File-CD_Gadget&Rev_00009876543210ABCDEF&0

Suppose we are going to install a driver on the 64-bit system. To edit it, open cfadisk.inf in any text editor. We need the sections cfadisk_device and cfadisk_device.NTamd64.

[cfadisk_device]
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDEDiskTS64GCF400______________________________20101008
[cfadisk_device.NTamd64]
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDEDiskTS64GCF400______________________________20101008

Hitachi Compact Flash Fixed Disk Filter Drivers

Change the value DiskTS64GCF400______________________________20101008 with the ID of your device.

We get:

[cfadisk_device]
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDEUSBSTORDisk&Ven_Linux&Prod_File-CD_Gadget&Rev_0000
[cfadisk_device.NTamd64]
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDEUSBSTORDisk&Ven_Linux&Prod_File-CD_Gadget&Rev_0000

Save the file.

If the driver is installed on a 32-bit system, you have to download the corresponding archive, unzip it and open cfadisk.inf for editing. Find the section [cfadisk_device]:

[cfadisk_device]
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTORDisk&Ven_LEXAR&Prod_JD_LIGHTNING_II&Rev_1100
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTORDisk&Ven_JetFlash&Prod_TS1GJF110&Rev_0.00
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTORDISK&VEN_&PROD_USB_DISK_2.0&REV_P

Then change the data in the last line, having specified the instance ID of our flash drive, i.e. in our example, we get:

%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTORDisk&Ven_LEXAR&Prod_JD_LIGHTNING_II&Rev_1100
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTORDisk&Ven_JetFlash&Prod_TS1GJF110&Rev_0.00
%Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTORDisk&Ven_Linux&Prod_File-CD_Gadget&Rev_0000

Installing Hitachi Microdrive Driver Instead of the Native USB Flash Driver

You only have to replace the driver used by the USB flash drive.

Open the Drivers tab and click Update Driver.

Specify the path to the directory in which you’ve extracted the archive with Hitachi driver that you’ve downloaded earlier.

Select the new driver.

Ignore the warning of the missing digital signature of the driver.

Tip. In Windows 10 and Windows 8, when installing Hitachi Microdrive USB driver, this error occurs:

Windows found driver software for you device but encountered an error while attempting to install it
Hitachi Microdrive
The third-party INF does not contain digital signature information

To disable the digital signature verification of drivers, run the following commands:

bcdedit.exe /set nointegritychecks ON
bcdedit.exe /set TESTSIGNING ON

Restart the computer and try installing the driver again.

Now you only have to restart the computer and when open the Disk Managment console, verify that the flash drive is identified as a common hard disk (Type: Basic) and uses Hitachi driver.

By opening Windows Explorer, you can also make sure that the icon of the flash drive has changed: it is displayed as a common hard drive.

Now this flash drive can be used as a regular HDD: you can create partitions, specify the active partition, create dynamic disks, install software that does not work from USB flash drives, etc.

How to Remove Hitachi Microdrive Driver

To delete Hitachi Microdrive driver, open the properties of the drive and click Update Driver on the Drivers tab. The system will install the native driver.

Tip. If after installing the Hitachi driver, the system stops booting with the BSOD, you must boot your computer from the Windows installation media (or LiveCD) and manually delete the following files:

• cfadisk.sys in the folder %windir%System32drivers
• Folder “cfadisk.inf_amd64_…” in %windir%System32DriverStoreFileRepositoty

Restart the computer.

USB Flash drives are everywhere. Compact, with storage up to 256GB as of 2010, Flash drives are portable and can store massive amounts of data. On occasion, Flash drives can become unrecognized when plugged into a USB port. That is frustrating, to say the least, but the data usually is recoverable, since a Flash drive contains a memory chip rather than a movable drive disk. A real problem occurs if the drive is not seen at all by the computer. Then, the data on the drive likely will be lost without the aid of a drive recovery service.

Hitachi Compact Flash Fixed Disk Filter Driver Windows 10

Make a backup version of the disk contents if at all possible.

Download a free Windows app to do a low-level formatting (See Resources). Formatting will erase the contents of the drive.

Plug the flash drive into a USB port on the computer. If detected, it will appear in the 'My Computer' directory/menu after a few seconds.

Right click on the USB drive icon, then click on 'Properties' from the drop-down menu.

Choose the 'Tools' tab in the 'Properties' dialog box. Click 'Check Now' to start the error-checking tool. Select both available options and run the program. If the program fails to complete, try the process through the command prompt.

Using the Command Prompt

Click 'Start' and select 'Run.' Type 'cmd' in the text box to open the command prompt.

Type 'C:>chkdsk E: f r' (do not include the quote marks). Change 'E' as the drive letter, if this is different on your computer for the flash drive. Be sure the disk is locked. Click 'Enter' to begin the process.

Try to open the Flash drive once the process completes. If this fails, a disk recovery service is the only hope.

Warnings

Flash drives can be defragmented, but it shortens the life of the drive by making unnecessary writes of the Flash chip.

Video of the Day

Photo Credits

• USB flash drive image by Bosko Martinovic from Fotolia.com

Hitachi Compact Flash Fixed Disk Filter Drivers

More Articles