Question Best Flash Drives 2024 - which appear as "disk drive" in Windows, not as "Removable" ?

[asdffdsa1123]

hello, first time poster, please, i have a question about usb drives.
https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-flash-drives#section-other-flash-drives-we-tested

it would be great to know which usb devices are considered `Disk drives` and which are considered `Removable`??
i need to purchase only usb device that is considered by Windows as `Disk drives`, so i can boot from Hyper-V virtual machine

In Windows, a usb drive can appear as two device types:
* `Disk drives`, same as a c: drive on a machine, such as my `Corsair Voyager GTX`
* `Removable` , such as the great Samsung Fit Plus.

both types, allow a physical machine to boot from usb, for example with ventoy or rufus.

the significant difference is with Hyper-V and booting from a virtual machine.
* 'Disk drives` can be taken offline and attached as `Physical hard disk`, the virtual machine can boot from it
* `Removable` , the vm CANNOT boot from it.

 

[CountMike]

hello, first time poster, please, i have a question about usb drives.
https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/best-flash-drives#section-other-flash-drives-we-tested

it would be great to know which usb devices are considered `Disk drives` and which are considered `Removable`??
i need to purchase only usb device that is considered by Windows as `Disk drives`, so i can boot from Hyper-V virtual machine

In Windows, a usb drive can appear as two device types:
* `Disk drives`, same as a c: drive on a machine, such as my `Corsair Voyager GTX`
* `Removable` , such as the great Samsung Fit Plus.

both types, allow a physical machine to boot from usb, for example with ventoy or rufus.

the significant difference is with Hyper-V and booting from a virtual machine.
* 'Disk drives` can be taken offline and attached as `Physical hard disk`, the virtual machine can boot from it
* `Removable` , the vm CANNOT boot from it.

Look at Policy settings for Removable drives and set as "Better performance" and "Enable write caching".

 

[asdffdsa1123]

"Look at Policy settings for Removable drives and set as "Better performance" and "Enable write caching"

thanks but that is not the issue, does not address my question.

i want to know which usb drives appear as fixed disk drive in windows computer management.
some drives such as corsair gtx appear as fixed drive, and then, from hyper-v vm, i can boot from it.

 

[Misgar]

i need to purchase only usb device that is considered by Windows as `Disk drives`, so i can boot from Hyper-V virtual machine

Is this any good? The link is a bit old though (Windows 7)..
https://woshub.com/removable-usb-flash-drive-as-local-disk-in-windows-7/

This post implies the Removable Bit solution hasn't worked for years.
https://www.tenforums.com/drivers-h...-act-like-permanent-hard-disk-win-10-pro.html

Here's something else to consider:
https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/byj46l/comment/eqi8e01/
"One way is to create a virtual hard drive on drive that is say 85% of capacity of actual drive. Mount vhd as a drive and it will be seen as in internal drive."


If you do find a solution it would be interesting to hear about it. I run all my Hyper-V images from internal SSDs and (occasionally) from hard disk. Running VMs from external storage would free up internal disk space.


For the exact opposite problem, I use this fix to stop Windows from marking internal drives as 'removeable', on old motherboards. A quick 'TreatAsInternalPort' registry hack and it's "cured".

https://superuser.com/questions/1010792/internal-hard-drives-showing-as-removable-in-windows-10

 

[rzimbauer]

I also have this question. I have a Nekteck mSATA to USB-C enclosure that I bought in 2020 that appears as a fixed drive (not removable) and I'm looking to buy another one with similar functionality. Instead of OP's use case of vms, I like fixed drives because if the filesystem is bootable, then they appear in the Windows Recovery boot manager, whereas bootable removable drives do not appear there.