Do You Want to Remove USB Flash Drive Software?
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You probably have Flash drives lying around. My Dad recently bought a new Flash drive and plugged it into his computer, to find that a window popped up. The U3 software was installed on it. He wasn’t very happy about that, let me tell you. He didn’t want that on his drive, and he wanted me to fix it. No problem, thankfully. I just happened to be there at his house at the time, so I took care of it for him.
This is one of the biggest tips I have for you if you’re going to be buying a Flash drive these days, whether you’re a Geek or not. When you buy one, you want to check and find out whether or not U3 is installed on it. There is an advantage to having it on there, such as when you need to run portable apps like Skype on it. If you buy a Flash drive that comes with U3 installed and decide you no longer want it, you can run the uninstaller from U3. Yes, it really does work.
Back when U3 was first released, a lot of us were complaining that there was no uninstaller. We wanted a high capacity drive, and it was annoying to have the software pop up every time we plugged it in. There are drives that may not have U3 software on it, but they could have other software preinstalled. Often, the drives that are given away at trade shows will have data already on them that is near impossible to delete.
Have no fear! I found a program that will take care of these pesky programs and data files for you. It’s only for Mac OS X, but I’m looking for a Windows and Linux equivalent. Hidden Cleaner will wipe your Flash drive clean. It can also delete the hidden files OS X creates like .DS_Store.
How many Flash drives do you have? What’s the biggest one you have? Do you hold on to smaller ones even after you purchase a ginormous gargantuan-sized drive?
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15 Comments
George
June 15th, 2008
at 10:11pm
you could also just completely format the drive, which should get rid of everything, I think. What I want to know is how well that usb to ram thing works in windows vista.
Justin Capasso
June 15th, 2008
at 10:34pm
I have three, a 4gb, 512mb and a *cry* 128mb. Each has a purpose — and one has U3 on it. I used to use the U3 software, but over time I just forgot about it. I don’t bother deleting the software, since it isn’t my primary drive. It never crossed my mind that I could remove the U3 stuff though…..
d00msay3r3
June 16th, 2008
at 12:02am
I have a Patriot XT 8gb flash drive. It is super fast and I use it with most of my software. I love the fact I can carry my Firefox, Thunderbird, and my cd burner software wherever I go along with a few other free favorites. I use Pstart for my software menu. Works well and is small and free.
CLF
June 16th, 2008
at 1:49am
I think I’ll be laughing at myself few years to come as I just bought a 8GB drive months ago which cost ~USD 30.
I guess the price will drop significantly by this year end. :S
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June 16th, 2008
at 7:05am
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June 16th, 2008
at 7:24am
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Julio Irizar
June 16th, 2008
at 10:05am
Friends! I have one old, very old 16MB flash drive, which still work fine, but only keep it as a historical relic. For my work I use a 1GB Toshiba U3 flash drive and I found the U3 software very usefull. For example the pop email software for cheking my emails at client computer without creting a new acount in his Microsoft Outlook. But anyway is a good thing to know that in any moment I can remove the U3 software if needed. Thanks!
Justin
June 16th, 2008
at 11:37am
In my opinion you should always have more than one flash drive. Personally, I have three currently. One I use for school work, another for messing around with and so on. Also if you happen to lose your only one big flash drive, thats a big problem! And I have found that more people like the U3 then not. I personally have not used the U3 software yet, but I plan to.
Commodore256
June 16th, 2008
at 11:59am
To get rid of my flash drive apps, I format it to FAT32 and kiss the U3 software goodbye.
By the way, I only have a 1GB flash drive.
Elf
June 16th, 2008
at 12:16pm
I’ve always stuck to mikomi for my flash drives, They don’t come with anything pre-installed just a fresh partition waiting to be full up!
I have about five 1GB ones lying around here and an 8GB one that I carry everywhere with me on my keyring. Handy little thing.
cananito
June 16th, 2008
at 5:58pm
OMG THANKS CHRIS THANKS, well, I don’t know why am I so happy, but this info is actually aswome, I don’t like pre-installed software on usbs, that’s why so much happyness came into me I guess :P
Anyway, thanks again, now I’m a happy men, actually, I should slap myself for not browsing the web to look up for a solution instead of not linking usb’s with software :P
chris ham
June 17th, 2008
at 8:48pm
why not keep it? It really doesn’t affect the computer and its not that big of a file.
Pyralis
June 18th, 2008
at 8:17pm
I have only one USB flash drive at the moment. A 16 GB “Super USB” drive that I picked up at a local electronics liquidation outlet. I have a few portable apps installed on that drive and the rest of it is filled with media files. I’m even thinking about picking up another one sometime soon. You can never have too much ultra-portable storage dangling from your key chain. :)
Tom Rogers
June 28th, 2008
at 1:39pm
I really could of done with this a few months ago. My mom bought me a flash drive for when I went to my new school and it had the dreaded U3 on it. When I plugged it into any of the systems it would not work as our school firewall blocks EXE files. This meant that I could not use that drive.
Useful Habits
July 23rd, 2008
at 8:51pm
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