I have bought a SanDisk Cruzer 1 GB thumb drive, which incorporates something called the “U3 System”. I only wanted the thumb drive to be a data repository, and have found the U3 to be distracting and very annoying with all its pop-up windows and menus that appear when the drive is inserted into the computer. The thumb drive appears within Windows as a removable disk and also a CD-ROM drive. In an attempt to remove U3 I found a program called “Launchpad Removal Program” on SanDisk’s website, but this does not seem to work. Subsequently, I also tried formatting the drive but this also did not remove U3. Looking through Disk Management I found that the removable drive and CD-ROM drive portions of the thumb drive are classified as partitions on the thumb drive, but cannot be removed (as the “Delete Partition” button is disabled). Can you please explain how U3 can be removed from the thumb drive?

For those who are unaware, U3 is a system found on some brands of thumb drives (such as SanDisk and Toshiba) and allows the user to install “portable” applications on the thumb drive. All the preferences and settings for these applications are stored on the thumb drive, allowing the user to plug the drive into many different computers and use their own customised programs on the different machines. For example, you can load Portable Firefox onto a U3 thumb drive. If you then save a bookmark within Portable Firefox this will be saved in the U3 system rather than on the computer itself. As such, you can plug your U3 thumb drive into another computer and Portable Firefox will run with all the bookmarks you saved when using another computer, plus any other customisations you have made. As you can see, this allows people who use multiple computers to carry their own applications and preferences between these computers with minimal fuss.

However, while U3 can be convenient for those users who wish to move between computers, if you do not want the U3 functionality it can be a major pain. Many users just want the thumb drive to be simply a data storage drive, without the overhead of U3 loading every time the drive is connected to the computer. Therefore, as you have attempted, users can remove U3 from the drive. As you have discovered, the U3 system splits the thumb drive into two partitions: a removable disk partition and a system partition (which appears as a CD-ROM drive within Windows). The removable disk partition is used to store your normal data, plus U3 applications (within a hidden SYSTEM folder in the partition). The emulated CD-ROM partition has been setup to automatically launch the U3 LaunchPad when the flash drive is connected to the computer. The reason that this is designed as an emulated CD-ROM drive is so the drive can have an autorun configuration, allowing the U3 LaunchPad to automatically launch (much like when you insert a CD into the CD-ROM drive as the CD automatically launches the setup program). This cannot normally be achieved using a standard removable disk, as it cannot be guaranteed to work reliably on all versions of Windows XP and Vista, and using an emulated CD-ROM drive is a much safer method to ensure that the U3 LaunchPad will automatically load when the thumb drive is inserted into the computer.

To remove U3 it is not recommended that you directly change the partitioning configuration on the drive, as this can cause more harm than good. Instead, you should use the U3 removal program. You mentioned that you have already tried the SanDisk U3 removal utility without success, but you have not provided any information about exactly what happened when you tried to use the removal utility. Therefore, I would suggest that you try using the removal utility again from: www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1415 . Should this fail, you can try using the inbuilt removal utility within U3 on your thumb drive. Open the U3 LaunchPad and go to “Settings” > “U3 LaunchPad Settings” and click the “Uninstall” tab. This should allow you to remove U3 from your thumb drive. All else failing, you can try using the generic U3 removal utility. Because SanDisk provide their own uninstaller for U3 from their brand of thumb drive, you should only use the generic U3 removal utility as a last resort. If you wish to proceed, the utility can be downloaded from the U3 website at: www.u3.com/uninstall . Please let me know how the removal process goes, and which of the above works to clear U3 from your thumb drive.