Hi, can anyone tell me what are the differences in how Windows treats "Removable" and a "Local" drives, besides the fact that Windows does not allow removable drives to have more than one partition? The reason I ask was that I was thinking of partitioning my new USB flash drive into two partitions. In order to do that, I have to trick Windows into thinking it is not a removable drive. Is there any disadvantage in that? Will I lose any functionality by making it look like a non-removable drive? Thanks in advance.

Considering how inexpensive USB memory keys are these days, I can't imagine wasting my time trying to partition one....I'd just by a second one.

I know, but what I wanted was to create two partitions so as to have one encrypted and the other unencrypted. The unencrypted partition is useful as it allows me to pass files to friends ("here, stick this in your USB port and take a look at this file"). I don't want to carry two drives on my keyring. In the end, I've created an encrypted virtual drive using a file-based container that takes up half the capacity of the memory key. I've used the Truecrypt utility.

You can use Puppy linux livecd, just boot up your computer from livecd & run Gparted to create partitions as many you want. It is free & very fast.