How to remove u3 from linux

SoleSoul · 2009-11-16 23:18:05

Hi
I was surprised to see that after overwriting my friend's sandisk cruzer micro with dd and reformatting it, u3 was still there.
In another case, another friend gave me an Ipod shuffle which had a virus on it's little cd-like partition and I couldn't get rid of it since no antivirus software could write to that partition and gparted couldn't even see it.

Well, I thought, this usb disk is a storage device, and linux doesn't restrict me from using my storage devices, so I must be missing something.
I googled this question and found nothing other than "use the windows uninstaller".

Is it really impossible to clear this kind of partition from linux?
Does the device have two physical drives in it or it's just one, divided to partitions?

Did anybody ever did it?
Thanks.

rine · 2009-11-16 23:29:08

I also tried to remove that crap but with no luck. I just think there is some kind of hardware write protection. If so, chances are bad I guess.

gogi-goji · 2009-11-17 02:17:57

I had to resort to the Windows uninstaller to get that u3 stuff of my usb drive. I couldn't figure out any other way.

Gen2ly · 2009-11-17 12:05:45

Yeah, me too. Also I learned after that the driver that comes with it is able to get rid of it. If I remember correctly it buried under a few options.

donryanocero · 2010-01-03 19:08:40

I got rid of it by using an ext3 filesystem rather than vfat. Once i put vfat back on it, it started misbehaving again. I use my flash drive on windows boxen, so I had to put fat, as well as u3, back on the drive. I don't think you can get rid of it entirely.

urist · 2010-01-03 21:39:02

A nice workaround, as stated above, is to use ext2/3. If you must use it on Windows boxes you have control of, you can install a driver to add support for ext2/3 drives.

tavianator · 2010-01-04 02:13:21

dd has always worked for me, but you've got to overwrite the partition table it seems. They did something tricky I haven't really figured out. But nothing a good old dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sd<whatever> bs=1M count=1 and a repartition couldn't fix. But you've got to use /dev/sdc (for example), not /dev/sdc1 (for example).

Ultraman · 2010-01-04 15:34:48

urist wrote:

A nice workaround, as stated above, is to use ext2/3. If you must use it on Windows boxes you have control of, you can install a driver to add support for ext2/3 drives.

Unfortunately that is not an options on computers in schools or workplaces. Since you run in user-mode there and aren't allowed to install any sort of device drivers.
If that is not the case, the ext2 driver can work. But for me it is not an option.

But like said above, dd without specifying a partition, just the device, could help.

helium · 2010-01-04 21:24:58

Perhaps you could try this program: http://u3-tool.sourceforge.net/

Arch Linux

#1 2009-11-16 23:18:05

How to remove u3 from linux

#2 2009-11-16 23:29:08

Re: How to remove u3 from linux

#3 2009-11-17 02:17:57

Re: How to remove u3 from linux

#4 2009-11-17 12:05:45

Re: How to remove u3 from linux

#5 2010-01-03 19:08:40

Re: How to remove u3 from linux

#6 2010-01-03 21:39:02

Re: How to remove u3 from linux

#7 2010-01-04 02:13:21

Re: How to remove u3 from linux

#8 2010-01-04 15:34:48

Re: How to remove u3 from linux

#9 2010-01-04 21:24:58

Re: How to remove u3 from linux

Board footer