OT: Garbage on new USB Flash Drive

They supposedly have an uninstall routine for that stuff on their web site. I have the same problem but haven't gotten around to scrubbing it yet.

On Jun 9, 4:02=EF=BF=BDpm, "Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote:=

Just wondering... Could it be peer-to-peer stuff for USB On the Go?

I've seen memory sticks come pre-loaded with software to...

-- Provide a compressed file system

-- Provide an encrypted file system

-- Provides lots of useless advertising

different manufacturers do different things with it, some are very interesting apps.

Yes, go to the manufactures page, and you should find a full run down, including removal tools.

Or simply reformat it.

Cheers Don...

I bought an SD card preloaded with the previous owner's pictures of his wife/girlfriend, if you know what I mean. Got a laugh out of it, then reformatted it and told the retailer that they were lucky some prude or kid didn't get a hold of it.

Sandisk stick's I've bought have come with some monstrosity called U3, which causes linux to see the device as containing two physical volumes one of which it can't do much with. There's a utility for removing it that you can download, but it kind of only works on windows or perhaps OSX machines.

It's really too bad that we don't have a way to utilize the open source underpinning of OSX to make a wine-like compatibility layer for running those applications on linux, or I suppose if it fits your preference ordinary BSD.

These might possibly be an installation of software intended to support "U3".

U3 is a Windows-oriented bag of goo intended to make it possible for Windows applications to (1) be installed onto a flash drive, (2) run directly from the flash drive when the drive is plugged into a Windows system, (3) store settings and so forth on the flash drive itself and not on the host PC's hard drive, and (4) "clean up after itself" (deleting any temporary resources/files stored on the host PC's hard drive) when the flash drive is removed.

It's also possible that you've gotten your hands on a flash drive which has been infected with one or more pieces of malware, either at the factory, or in an infected customer's system (after a product return).

Some flash drives can have partitions created and hidden away by the security functions contained in some of those utilities supporting matching hardware encryption facilities built into the drive chips.

Mostly this will be supported for Windows users only, you can safely ignore all this for other platforms.

And then there is U3....

A not-very-well-done solution to the problem of keeping an application and all its settings on removable media. Microsoft is planning to come up with their own solution anyway; see:

Don't assume it is all garbage. I found some of it very useful. When windows explorer destroyed itself, I was able to get back on the net using the Firefox executable on the SanDisk. I think there is documentation on the drive for all the routines, including instructions on how to get rid of all of it.

Tam - Middletown

Any problem reformatting in NTFS?

Assuming that you only run Windows, no problem. Works fine.

If you move the drive between Windows / Mac / Linux / BSD or plan to do so in the future, FAT16 or FAT32 are better choices.

Hmm. The fine print on the package says something about U3. That may be it.

There doesn't appear to be a second partition. Only 6% of the drive is used (so maybe its a tiny partition). Its possible that, upon inserting the drive in a Windows machine, the application is automatically launched, splitting the drive in two.

In that case, its coming off.

If I want to carry my own s/w around, I'll load a live Linux system on a bootable memory stick.

If you're referring to U3, here's a utility to get rid of it:

Info on what it is can be found here:

On a sunny day (Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:02:08 -0700) it happened "Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in :

Well, as you run Linux, plug in the USB stick or card, type 'dmesg' a couple of times, until you see it is recognised.

Then, for example, type: mke2fs /dev/sda1 (Note the sdaONE, or whatever it was identified by in dmesg). Now you have created an ext2 filesystem on the flash or whatever it is.

I bought a 4GB USB memory stick, it came with a small booklet with links to all sorts of software, I thought WHAT IS THIS???? mke2fs fixed all that.

An other advantage is, that if you lose it, some MS victim who finds it, will try it, will not be able to read your data (I think).

Of course you could use other Linux filesystems too.... A third advantage is that using ext2 filesystem allows all your Unix filenames with permissions in the right case. And THAT counts.

MS is dead, look how they crawl back to XP more and more. Look how hopeless Balmer says windows 7 will only have touch screen as new feature over Vista. Vista was bad, touch screens would make me stop computers....

So, anyways forget about that FAT 16 or FAT 32 crap on FLASH.

NTFS may wear the FLASH out faster than FAT32. On an NTFS file system, it has to write "Bill gates rules the world" into sector 666 every time a file is changed.

If you do format as NTFS most Linux boxes can be set up to be able to read the files on the stick. If you are brave, Linux can also write to an NTFS device but they are great big warnings in red letters about it not working.

For the sizes of devices we can get today FAT32 is the best way to go. FAT16 requires that the "clusters" be bigger than many files are. This can lead to a "cluster f...ile" when you try to write many small files.

What's the standard format for Linux then?

On a sunny day (Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:00:01 -0700) it happened "Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in :

Yea, well one could drop MS. Or go ethernet.

I want to be able to swap data between Windows and Linux.

The current Flash file systems (VFAT, I think) support long filenames in the correct case ....if written or read by a 'real' O/S. Its Windows that buggers up the cases.