U3 Removal

On Black Friday, I purchased a small handful of 1GB micro thumb drives from Staples for $7 each. These were SanDisk U3 Smart drives labeled Cruzer micro 1.0GB, model BB0609O3B, SDCZ6-1024. They got a retractable USB plug and illuminate when connected.

The idea behind U3 technology is to do what many geeks want: keep a small collection of useful applications like Firefox, a virus checker, and so forth on a portable device without having to go through the installation process. If they simply put the special version of the applications on your disk preloaded, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

The problem, however, is that U3 is invasive. The thumb drive comes with two partitions on it. The second partition, while small, is marked as read-only, and includes an autorun file which starts the U3 program, putting it annoyingly in the system tray on XP. Meanwhile, on OS X, a second drive image also mounts. Again, annoying.

The problem is you can’t re-format the device on either platform using the standard tools. OS X gets close, being able to see the logicals drives, partitions, and images. But, in well behaving Apple fashion, it refuses to destroy data it doesn’t own in configurations right out of the box.

While I’m looking for a solution that zaps the USB drive at the raw bit level, the only solution I’ve found is a specific U3 removal tool (which toasts all the data on the drive, so be careful) at these URLs, which reclaim all the drive space:

• http://www.u3.com/uninstall/
• http://www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1415

I know some thumb drives have the ability to password-protect themselves, making them literally read-only. I suspect that may be what’s going on, and hence the reason for the removal tool: it unlocks the device.

Aside from that, the drives themselves work quite well.