The first thing that I would like to tell you is that this is not a easy tutorial because there is really no simple way to partition a pendrive as it is detected as operating system as a removable media. To partition a pendrive we need to fool the operating system into thinking that it (pendrive) is a hard drive. For this we will have to create our own set of drivers. I am again warning you that this is an advance tutorial.

Alright, you are still here and reading so let me tell you what we will be doing, we will be tricking the operating system that our pendrive is actually a hard drive. Therefore we will be able to create partitions on that drive. Only the first partition will be visible on other computers, all partition will be visible on your system so you can put your private data in the other partitions. By doing this you can also save your private/important data from being damaged by viruses from other computers

Also See : How to partition a hard drive

For doing this you will need a simple universal USB drive driver, you can download it from HERE
Download and uncompress the downloaded file. Also, backup the contents of your pendrive as you will need to format it in the process. Now all the preps has been done so, lets start the process.

Step 1

Plug your USB drive into the USB port of your computer. Now open device manager by right clicking on My computer and then choosing Manage.

Click on device manager on the left panel. After this you should be able to see all the hardware devices connected to you computer in the right panel. Now on the right panel scroll down to the disk drives, there you will be able to see your pendrive, right click on it and click on properties.

Step 2

Now you should be able to see pendrive properties window, choose detail tab on this window. From the scroll down menu choose device instance path. You should be able to see a string of characters, right click on it and click on copy. Now you can close this window.

Step 3

Now open the folder that you downloaded and uncompressed before and open the file named ‘cfadisk.inf’ present in this folder. You can open it in any text editor i.e notepad, wordpad.

Step 4

Now find the words ‘device_instance_id_goes_here’. You can find these words on line number 26, now replace this string with the string that you copied from the pendrive properties tab. Save the file and close your text editor.

Step 5

Now again open the pendrive properties window from the device manager and goto ‘Driver’ tab and click on update driver.

Step 6

Now it will ask you how do you want to search the driver, on this window choose browse from computer and on the next window choose let me pick from a list of drivers.

Step 7

On the next window, uncheck the box ‘Show compatible hardware’ and click on the ‘Have disk button’. Now click on ‘Browse’ and choose that .inf file that we edited using a text editor before. After that click on OK and then next buttons on the previous windows.

Step 8

An update driver warning message should popup. Ignore this message and click on yes. Computer will now start the installation of the driver and another warning will popup stating that driver is not verified or authentic. Ignore this one also and click on install this driver software anyway. You will see success message when system completes the installation.

Note : You can use this modified .inf file/driver only for this pendrive because of the unique device path. Its different for different pendrives.

Step 9

Thats all you need to do, now your operating system will detect this pendrive as a hard disk and you can make partition just as you make for regular hard drives.

You can use this tutorial : Partition a Hard Drive

Note : All the partitions will be visible only on your system and only first partition will be visible on any other computer. You can keep the driver file in the first partition and use it to install driver on other computer in case you need to access data from other partition on other computers.

Share with us what you kept in your secret partition in comments sections

Other similar posts that you might like:

1. How To Partition A Hard Drive [Windows]