Stupid Flash Drive!

[flawedreality5]

I just had to buy a 512mb USB flash drive for my Java class. Anyway I picked up a Memorex one on sale and it has this rediculous program that automatically opens when I plug it in. I've tried formatting the drive over and over but the program keeps coming back when I thought it was gone. Anyone know what I could do to wipe the thing totally clean?

[glc]

Remove the partitions in disk management, then make a new partition and format it.

Are you sure the "program" isn't just XP's autorun?

[flawedreality5]

No. It's like an animated Memorex management program for the drive. Gives options to download programs, enable password for the drive. It's very dumb. I can't seem to get rid of it under disk management either. The program autoruns from the drive as soon as I plug it in. I tried formatting to FAT and FAT32 with no luck.

[EzyStvy]

When you view the drive in Disk Mgmt, how many partitions do you see on it? If more than one, remove both, then recreate one & format.

[flawedreality5]

I don't think I'm going to be able to clear this thing. The main partition is only 495mb FAT32 out of the 512. When I plug it in, it mounts an extra CD-ROM drive and opens the "U3 launchpad" program from there and you can see the other 10mb under the mounted drive.

[Retrac1324]

U3 is a technology that allows you to run customized programs without installing them on the computer your using.

I don't think you can disable it at all, but i'm not sure though.

[flawedreality5]

Well that's dissapointing.

[glc]

There's 9mb unaccounted for - a 512mb drive should show up as 504mb in disk management.

You need to remove every partition you see in disk management till you have a totally unallocated drive. From what I can find, U3 smart drives have multiple partitions. Reformatting the 495mb partition will do absolutely nothing.

[flawedreality5]

I can't see 2 partitions on the drive. Just the one FAT32. As soon as I plug it in the, the stupid U3 launchpad opens through the mounted drive. I can't close it without ejecting the drive. The other space that is unaccounted for, shows up under the mounted CD-ROM drive that the drive creates. And I can't repartition that.

[kilgoretrout]

If you are familiar with linux you can zero fill the entire drive there pretty easily then repartition and format in windows. I'm curious about the reported size however. My 512MB sandisk cruzer is really about 488MB which is about right if you figure they are using decimal instead of binary in reporting the size, i.e. 512,000,000bytes/1024/1024 = 488MB. Where do you get the 504MB size?

Here's an article on U3:

http://news.designtechnica.com/featured_article24.html

If it's a hardware spec/API, you may not be able to get rid of it, i.e. u3 may be launched by winxp upon detecting a u3 compatible device and that may have nothing to do with what's on the drive but rather the devices hardware signature to windows. You might be able to disable u3 form within windows somehow.

[glc]

Sorry about that - I was thinking 528mb.

Maybe the U3 is in firmware - if so, that's gonna be a pain.

[flawedreality5]

I think it is firmware. We've been using it in Knoppix for Java class and it doesn't load in there. I'll try to fiddle with it in Linux though and let you know what happens.

[kilgoretrout]

You can zero fill any drive in linux by running this with the drive unmounted:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=[device file of drive to be zero filled]

Be very careful when using this that you get the right device file or you could wind up zeroing out your hard drive by mistake. The device file for a flash drive will usually be /dev/sdx. Sata and scsi drives also use "sdx" for device files, i.e. the first sata/scsi drive is /dev/sda, the second /dev/sdb, ect. The flash drive usually takes the next letter in sequence behind any internal hard drives. If you're not sure which device file your flash drive is on run:

# fdisk -l

for a full listing of every recognized drive on the system by device file. If you don't have any scsi or sata drives, the first usb storage device is typically /dev/sda so you would run:

# umount /dev/sda1
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

It will take several minutes to write zeros to every sector and exit with a block count and a message that it ran out of blocks to write to.

[flawedreality5]

I'll give this a try when the semester is over. I've been so busy lately. It sounds like it should work, but I don't want to risk anything to the drive and be out of luck for class.

[flawedreality5]

Just a follow up. I formatted like kilgoretrout said and it didn't get rid of the U3 program. When I changed back into Windows and plugged the thing in, the U3 program said that the storage wasn't formatted and to format, after I did, it copied its program files back onto the partition. I think it's just firmware that can't be removed.