SanDisk Cruzer shows 2 drives

[tabsnoopy]

We use our SanDisk Cruzer 2GB as a way to work on files both at home and at our office. We have simply been saving the latest version of various Word, Excel, & Publisher files directly to the stick, not necessarily saving copies to our HDDs. The problem is that at home it has been normally showing up as drive "L:" until recently when we also had a USB HDD plugged in and the Cruzer had to come in as drive "M:". Now it starts up as drives "M:" & "L:", with the files being visible on both drives, yet some of them will not open, giving an "invalid path" error. I have tried reassigning it to just one drive by various means to no avail. Any ideas on how to rectify this situation? Thanks

[glc]

We have simply been saving the latest version of various Word, Excel, & Publisher files directly to the stick, not necessarily saving copies to our HDDs.

This is VERY unsafe.

How to fix? Copy all the files you need off it and repartition/reformat it. If it's a U3 drive, remove U3.

[Rev_pizzaguy]

Hah, yeah. I have one of those Sandisk Cruzer micro's. I cleared everything off, deleted the partitions, and then formatted the black sections into one partition and assigned a single drive letter. U3 is interesting, but can be annoying.

[juppy]

If it's a U3 drive, remove U3.Quick question.....why remove U3? Is there something bad about it or just the fact that it takes up extra space? Why I ask, I have this same 2Gig Cruzer and it still has the U3 on it. Not that I use it. I usually do most of my file transfers by opening the Explorer window.

[not important]

I remove U3 just because it has nothing useful for me.

[Rev_pizzaguy]

One thing I ran into is that on college computers that I was using at the time, there was a limit in place that only read the first drive letter if you had a usb drive that contained more than one partition. The first partition happened to be the one containing the U3 info and not my documents. Because of this, I removed the partitions and set it up as a "normal" single partition USB drive. I also don't use U3 and don't like the fact that it puts an extra drive that "takes up visual space" in the My Computer window.