MSI motherboard USB key showing up as sda and sr0

VannTen · 2025-09-07 08:33:57

Hello,

I just purchased a new motherboard (MSI Tomahawk X870 WIFI), and it comes with an USB key, 32G as AFAICT. What surprised me a bit is that plugging it in on my current install, it shows up as both a usb drive (sda) and a CD-ROM (sr0)

The usb drive only contains a 'IndexerVolumeGuid' file with a GUID inside and the WPSettings.dat which is empty besides some ^@ characters, while the CD-ROM has what look like setup stuff for windows drivers and MSI utilities, from what I can tell.
lsblk show me the following:
```
$ lsblk -o NAME,TRAN,SIZE,FSTYPE,VENDOR
NAME TRAN SIZE FSTYPE VENDOR
sda usb 23.9G VendorC
└─sda1 23.9G vfat
sr0 usb 21.5G iso9660 VendorC
```

What I'm curious about is, can I somehow reformat the whole USB drive to be become a "normal" 32G usb drive ?

It looks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U3_(software) but I'm kinda hoping it's not, because from what I understand you can't remove the CD-ROM (or at least not regain the space).

Anyone has ways to investigate further ?
(I'm fine with taking destructive measures, I backed up the CD-Rom and I have other USB keys, I'm more curious than anything else).

Thanks for you ideas !

nichts · 2025-09-10 17:55:26

Anyone has ways to investigate further ?

The journal while connecting the stick may reveal further information.

It looks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U3_(software) but I'm kinda hoping it's not, because from what I understand you can't remove the CD-ROM (or at least not regain the space).

Back in time there used to be u3-tool, which allowed to remove the emulated cdrom part. It might not be useable today so an old live system may be needed.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-09-07 08:33:57

MSI motherboard USB key showing up as sda and sr0

#2 2025-09-10 17:55:26

Re: MSI motherboard USB key showing up as sda and sr0

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