[Nottingham] Deleting virtual CD drive from Western Digital USB HDD

[Simon Osborne]

On 9 September 2010 15:02, Simon Sleaford <simon.sleaford at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9 September 2010 14:06, Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> On 09/09/10 13:42, Simon Sleaford wrote:
>> > Hi Martin
>> >
>> > This is the results of the command:
>> >
>> > *simon at 106602-1004:~$ ls -lh /dev/sd* /dev/sr**
>> > *brw-rw----  1 root disk   8,  0 2010-09-09 10:54 /dev/sda*
>> > *brw-rw----  1 root disk   8,  1 2010-09-09 10:52 /dev/sda1*
>> > *brw-rw----  1 root disk   8,  2 2010-09-09 10:54 /dev/sda2*
>> > *brw-rw----  1 root disk   8,  5 2010-09-09 10:52 /dev/sda5*
>> > *brw-rw----  1 root disk   8, 16 2010-09-09 12:53 /dev/sdb*
>> > *brw-rw----  1 root disk   8, 17 2010-09-09 12:53 /dev/sdb1*
>> > *brw-rw----  1 root disk   8, 32 2010-09-09 11:09 /dev/sdc*
>> > *brw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 11,  0 2010-09-09 13:19 /dev/sr0*
>> > *brw-rw----+ 1 root cdrom 11,  1 2010-09-09 12:53 /dev/sr1*
>> > *simon at 106602-1004:~$ *
>> >
>> >
>> > As you can see it sees it as a cdrom drive but it's actually on Western
>> > Digital Passport USB hard drive. ...
>>
>> Are sdb,sdb1,sdc and sr0,sr1 the same one physical device?... Or is sr0
>> a real "cdrom" device?
>>
>  sdb and sdb1 are the same device, ie the USB hard drive. sr0 is my cd-rom
> drive (I checked it with the eject command) and sr1 is the "virtual" CD
> drive that is mounted when I plug in the drive.
>
>
>>
>> > there and don't have anywhere to copy it to.
>>
>> Eeek... You must always keep a safe backup somewhere. That includes a
>> backup-of-your-backup if you are doing dubious things to your backup!
>>
> This is my backup drive. I've got the live data at home on a laptop, the
> files on this drive are the backups of my wife's photos etc. Most likely, I
> daren't delete them in case she has decided she wants to free up space at
> home knowing she has backups. I've got another drive at home that I can plug
> into my router for further backups when I get round to it, I guess I should
> make the effort!
>>
>> > I knows it's only a single gigabyte out of 320GB but I'm a bit annoyed
>> > that Western Digital decided that I would like their software in a
>> > difficult to remove partition on my drive.
>>
>> Manufacturer coercion is rather annoying. It's also annoying to know
>> that you can't make full utilisation of whatever device... Mmmm...
>> Perhaps that's why we have the FOSS and FSF evangelists?!
>>
>>
>> Which partition does your backup data appear on?
>
> My data is on /dev/sdb1
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> FOSS: Free Open Source Software
>> FSF: Free Software Foundation
>>
>> (Free meaning "freedom")

I assume you found this page:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/passport-vcd.html ? It mentions
that the VCD can be removed using U3 utilities and there is one for
Linux called U3-Tool ( http://u3-tool.sourceforge.net/ )

Anyway you should find some useful information. But try and back up
your data first before trying anything. And let us know if it works.

Simon