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I want to murder my (U3) USB Flash Drive.

T

Taylor C

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 27, 2007
729
0
All I can say is, what the hell. I picked up a 1G USB flash drive today just for a backup if I need to manually transfer files from home/school/work, and I figured I'd just format it and remove the monstrosity that is U3 from it by formatting it when I got home.

Yeah, right. They don't want you to do that. Every time I plug it in, in addition to the USB volume an additional "U3" volume pops up in the form of a CD. For those of you that don't know, U3 is software designed for USB sticks and acts as an interface for on-the-go Windows applications to be installed and run from the drive itself. Both U3 and SanDisk provide removal tools for the bundled program, but of course they only run on lolWindows.

I don't own any Windows machines, and have recently wiped all my Boot Camp partitions because I simply don't need anything Windows related anymore. I used to use it for Windows-only games, but I have no need for it anymore. I do have access to a Windows machine, but after wiping the flash drive Windows doesn't recognize it as a valid volume and says its a corrupted USB device. It's formatted as FAT32, though it originally came with FAT16.

I'm honestly about to go return this piece of crap and just buy a different one. I knew U3 was a pain, but I had no idea how bad it actually was. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
mkrishnan

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Wow, I heard those things are devilish...when you say that you wiped it, did you just erase or reformat the partition that mounts as a USB partition in OS X? How does it look in Disk Utility? Can it be re-partitioned using an MBR and a single FAT32 partition, and can a Windows computer see it then? For that matter, will Windows let you reformat it (on the computer you were testing it with)?
 
T

Taylor C

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 27, 2007
729
0
Windows won't even mount it. It shows up as two separate volumes in Disk Utility: One is a 973.8 MB volume that I've got complete read/write access to, and I'm able to format/repartition that, but the other is a 60.4MB volume that I can only read. This is the volume with the "U3 System" volume on it.

Edit:
1314014205_72d2491dc9_o.png
 
G

gonyr

macrumors 6502
Jul 9, 2006
293
0
Niagara County, NY
Did you erase and format it, or did you run the u3 (sucks) uninstaller? I had to bring mine to a friend's place to run the uninstaller, but had no problems. It sounds like you may have just formatted instead. I think at this point, I'd just return it and get another. I do like mine - the small size and retractable port (no cap to lose!) are great.
 
T

Taylor C

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 27, 2007
729
0
I erased it and formatted as MS-DOS (FAT32). How can I return it to its normal state so it'll autorun when plugged into a Windows machine and I can then run the uninstaller?
 
7

72930

Retired
May 16, 2006
9,060
4
As mentioned, there is a Windows-only uninstaller, if you have Boot Camp, Parallels, VMWare Fusion or access to a PC you can use it...its shocking that there is no way to get rid of it with OSX...
 
B

bingefeller

macrumors 6502a
Jun 25, 2007
573
25
Northern Ireland
psychofreak said:
As mentioned, there is a Windows-only uninstaller, if you have Boot Camp, Parallels, VMWare Fusion or access to a PC you can use it...its shocking that there is no way to get rid of it with OSX...
Click to expand...

Yeah I know, I read about the Windows only installer on various forums. I was just surprised that no one knew how to get rid of it on a Mac. I'm sure that there's a way.

Anyway, I downloaded the programme to my Dad's computer and erased it from there. I'll be staying away from U3 stuff in the future I think.
 
J

Jimmeh

macrumors newbie
Nov 13, 2007
1
0
I don't get it. Why would they not make something to uninstall their stupid software for mac when the reason I can't use it is because I only have a mac and it doesn't do anything on my computer but sit there and get in the way?
Plus I deleted all the crap that was on it while trying to make the U3 stop mounting so it probably wouldn't work if I found a PC to uninstall it with. I just got this flash drive because my other one inexplicably stopped working... I'm sick of dealing with flash memory problems :confused:

(As you can see, I am having the same problems)
 
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