U3: sucks

[worker201]

Argh, stupidity wins again.  My dad went out to buy himself some USB memory sticks by himself, and ended up getting Memorex Traveldrives with U3 technology.  This is some new thing that a lot of Flash vendors are picking up on.  It allows you to install programs onto your memory stick, and then run them on another computer, as if from a live CD.  Apparently it does this by having a 6MB partition that contains a bunch of device driver files and programs.  When you insert the drive, Windows will register 2 drives: a USB drive, and a CD drive.  The USB drive is for normal Flash applications - file transfers, etc.  The CD drive is for running the applications.  One of the applications it comes with is Thunderbird.  Sounds neat, right?

Wrong.  For starters, it only works in certain versions of XP.  That's because only those versions have the drivers to support U3.  Additionally, it only works when Windows security is disabled.  A default Windows installation, which boots straight to the desktop, and runs everything as 'owner', works fine.  But if you require login and have limited accounts, it won't work at all.  That's because U3 works by writing info into the registry, which it erases when it is ejected (and you have to use the special U3 ejection button, or it will fuck up your registry).  My dad's computer, which has no security, runs U3 when the traveldrive is inserted.  On my office computer, which has an administrator account and a power-user account, and requires login for both, it doesn't run at all.

Additionally, you aren't allowed to fuck with the partitions.  Partition Magic 8 won't even recognize the existence of the drive.  I wasn't able to investigate the thing too much in Linux, although the basic Flash memory part of it mounted okay, since the thing is formatted as VFAT.

The only way to get rid of the whole system is to use the U3 uninstaller.  I don't even know if it works, because I haven't had the chance to try it yet.  I downloaded it onto my machine at work, but it won't do the business because of the security issues outlined above.  I'm going to try the uninstallation on my dad's computer later tonight.

Long story short: if you buy a USB Flash memory stick, make sure it is not U3 enabled.  If it is, you will have a lot of crazy fun trying to reclaim your own hardware.  Stick with something that doesn't have this shit on it already.

read about U3 here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U3

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Since I don't use Window$ I have no need for U3. It also sounds like a really dumb idea ... hey here's a good idea ... get a real live CD (prefferably Linux, BSD, or OpenSolaris) and you can do the same damn thing without needing Window$, shitty drivers, or a shitty U3 enabled USB storage card.

[worker201]

Yes, you don't use Windows.  But more than likely, the next Flash drive you buy will have U3 on it.  Since Flash drive vendors have adopted it as a standard, it will probably be hard to find a Flash drive that is not U3 enabled in a couple of months.  So that's goodbye to 6 MB of wasted space, and hello to proprietary garbage on your drive that you don't want or need.  Just a warning.

[KernelPanic]

All of the above, plus:

http://portableapps.com/
Really p***es on their parade....

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Can't you just format the fucker as follows ...

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sda

hmmmm ... or maybe

/sbin/mkdosfs /dev/sda

or

fdisk /dev/sda

Maybe one will work. Partition Magic ain't too great from what I've seen. (this is all assuming you put the card in /dev/sda)

[worker201]

The hidden proprietary partition, for reasons that should be clear from the second and third words of this sentence, doesn't seem to respond to any editing commands in any OS.  Fortunately, the official U3 uninstaller works, and it gives you back the space it took up.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

That's crazy ... how do they do it ? and more importantly why do they do it ?

[worker201]

I figure the point is to sell more Flash drives.  And to lock out competition.  Lotta good it did em - at least 2 people I know are going to be avoiding U3 like the plague from now on, and apparently there's a competitive product available already.

[Pathos]

how can it hide the partition from linux ? is it implemented on the controller chip or something ?

The whole idea is pretty cool for those who want it but they should give easy failsafe options for installing and uninstalling it.

I don't think it hurts portable apps because I think you can install those in your data folder then add a shortcut to them in the U3 menu.

I think I'll still be buying non-U3 flash drives.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I wonder if this will work with Vista and its default settings, if not the it will disappear as soon as Vista appears.

[pofnlice]

U3 Still Sux

[Jack2000]

I bet this U3 can be exploited to run only on a *nix system and the drivers changed,
just have to find some one to reverse engineer it

[H_TeXMeX_H]

well technically you could run say firefox or openoffice right off a USB flash drive on Linux. Just copy it into there and run it (assuming you have mounting privilages)

[mobrien_12]

WTF is the point?  You can run apps from a flash drive anyway, you don't need it to appear as a CD.

[davidnix71]

I saw some U3's at Office Depot that they were trying very hard to get rid of. Apparently they have caused enough trouble that people don't want them.

Meritline.com has thumb drives that use removable sd and mmc chips. They are the cheap way to build an expandable usb thumb drive. No U3 issues with those. You can get 4 GB sd chip for less than $70 now. I got a chipless thumb drive for $5 with the purchase of a 2 GB sd chip.

The thumb drive is for transferring pix and mp3's to and from my digital video cam/mp3/usb flash drive.