Do you have CDFS partition on your USB flash drive? U3 drive has CDFS partition and easy to customize the CDFS partion with your own iso image. Here, some explaination is given about how to create CDFS partition on normal USB flash dirve.

If you have CDFS partition on your usb flash drive then you can see two drives ( one is CD rom, another is USB flash drive ) as shown below.

There are a few benefit to have CDFS partition on USB flash drive.

  • Autorun function : Run a application as usb flash drive is inserted without clicking ( not on vista)
  • Install OS : Boot from CDFS partiton on USB flash drive and insatll OS just like OS CD
  • Making Non writable partition ( read only)

USB Flash drives are mainly consist of USB controller chip and flash memory. In order to creat CD partition, you have focus on controller chip.

There are a few USB flash drive controller IC vendors …. USBEST, SMI, OTI, CHIPBANK,PHISON, Skymedi and a few more.

However, the explaination on this post is all about USB flash drives which use SMI and USBEST chip. If your USB flash drive use other control chip then, you can not find the proper information here.

1. First of all, you have to find out the vendor of usb controller IC in you USB flash drive.

If you know the vendor of the controller chip then skip this section. Otherwise visit here and download USBdeveiceview and run.

Now, you know the number of Vendor ID….

  • Vendor ID = 1307  => USBEST chip ( USBest vendor ID can be different than “1307 ” )
  • Vendor ID = 090c  => SMI Chip ( SMI vendor ID can be different than “090c ” )

If your controller chip is different than USBEST or SMI then, you can not find usefull information here.  sorry~ ㅠㅠ

In fact, other vendor chips also can make CD partition but a little tricky so, I do not post about it.

2. If your USB drive has SMI controller ( VendorID = 090c ) inside, you have use “SMI UFD utility”.  Insert your flash drive and  backup all data and take procedure as follows.

  • DownLoad SMI UFD utility ( Download )
  • Run SMI UFD utility
  • Refer to the image below

 Some product lists are given which are working with the above tool.

  • ADATA                                  C702                    2GB              SMI TOOL
    ADATA                                  C702                    4GB              SMI TOOL
    ADATA                                  C702                    8GB              SMI TOOL
  • ADATA                                  PD7                      4GB              SMI TOOL
    ADATA                                  PD7                      8GB              SMI TOOL
  • Buffalo                                   RUF2-E1G-K-AP 1GB             SMI TOOL
    Buffalo                                   RUF2-E2G-K-AP 2GB             SMI TOOL
    Buffalo                                   RUF2-E4G-K-AP 4GB             SMI TOOL
    Buffalo                                   RUF2-E8G-K-AP 8GB             SMI TOOL
  • Corsair                                  Survivor                 8GB              SMI TOOL
    Corsair                                  Voyager                2GB              SMI TOOL
    Corsair                                  Voyager                4GB              SMI TOOL
    GlodenMars                          GU-P08                4GB               SMI TOOL

3. If your USB drive has USBEST controller ( VendorID = 1307 ) inside, you have use “UCDexec.exe”.  Insert your flash drive and  back up all data and take procedure as follows.

  • DownLoad UCDexec.exe ( DownLoad )
  • Run UCDexec.exe
  • Refer to the image below

4. Re-insert USB flash drive and see if it works!

For your reference, CD partition build time defends on the iso file size. In my case, it tooks about  5 minits for windows XP CD image burning ( 620MB). And I could install windows xp to my labtop PC which has no ODD with easy.  With Windows XP+sp2 pack image, it took about 18 minuts to install XP.

If you want to remove CD partition, run each SMI UFD utility or UCDexec.exe . Then, do not select iso file path and click “make” or “Burn”

Warnning!! making CD partition is a little dangerous job. you lose all data or make USB flash drive permently un-useable. Be carefull!!