How to identify USB-sticks that will appear as non-removable before buying?

Solution 1:

I'm late. Your projects probably over, but...

Do a quick search of memory stick vendors and contact there tech. dept. Simply ask them if there sticks, or stick in question, will appear as a fixed drive, or a non-fixed/removable drive on your system. Mention your system, and maybe take note of your BIOS options(regarding this stuff, if any - a possibility)

I agree that this feature should be addressed better...but often...vendors will do what they must to sell there product...ONLY. Pardon my personal venting.

Solution 2:

I just had the same problem. So I ordered alot of the best tested usb flash drives. There was only one that met my demands of showing as fixed disk, and not as a removable one. This is the superfast writing/reading SANDISK Extreme 64 usb stick. Now running Windows 8.

Installation of the operating system (NOT Win Setup) was very easy. Partitioned it with Easeus in one active partition. Put the Ghost image of my Windows 8 on it and Ready it was.

Until now I used notebook drives in usb3 Case for that purpose. They show as fixed disks. I have Plop bootmanager for choosing the wanted usb partition to boot from. If I met any problem in booting of the USB stick or notebook usb, then i used BootIce to fix the issue.

(Imation IronKey also is shown as hd, but has got a unremovable security partition) I think the MS certified usb drives should also do the job, but I don't want Win2Go.