U3 Uninstaller?

February 12, 2006

Anyone have a clue how to get U3 off a USB drive?

I found a 'beta' uninstaller in another forum, but that didn't work.

The U3 system is this new standard for putting programs onto a USB drive, so you can take all your crap with you. Sounds good, but it's actually evil.

It a) installs a driver as soon as you plug it into a machine. (and doesn't ask if it can)

b) has a 2nd partition containing the U3 software/installer, which you can't edit. It's formatted with CDFS. With the driver above, you can't do jack with that 2nd partition.

Any suggestions for wiping that stuff out? I'd like to reclaim the lost space, and to be able to use the thing on machines without leaving evil bits all over the place.

I got flack elsewhere for buying a U3 drive rather than the non-U3 drive - preemptively:

1) the u3 drive was $40, the non-u3 version was $90. BestBuy won't trade me the U3 drive for a non-U3 one, since only the U3 one had a rebate. Why "more features" is less expensive than "less features" is beyond me. (Oh, wait, maybe it's because there might be DRM or spyware on it! </tinfoil hat>

2) the U3 paperwork makes no mention of installing anything, it just says there's software on the drive to help copy & launch programs and files.

Any help would be appreciated.

(I'm on windowsXP. I'll boot a knoppix live-cd if I have to, but I'd rather use a windows-based tool)