Removing U3 CDFS partition on PNY ATTACHE

[Petrus4]

Hi Everyone,

I have 1GB usb drive that had the U3 partition installed. I tried to remove it with software found here: http://www.u3.com/support/default.aspx#CQ3 After this the cdfs partition does not work anymore, it shows up as a cd-rom drive but is not accessible. So when I plug in my usb drive I see a cd-rom drive mapped to F: and a removable drive mapped to G:

I would like to remove this cd-rom drive partition. I have tried low level formatting with no luck since windows sees only the removable drive as something that can be formatted.

Has anyone had experience with removing the cd-rom partition off of a flash drive?

[Zorb]

How big is the non-CDFS part? Maybe the memory partition has been removed and just still showing the CD device. Remember, it's not just a partition like having two partitions on your hard disk. It's managed in hardware and is accordingly ill behaved.

And you can't low level format drives under Windows, so in other words, you thought of, but didn't try because there is no way to do it. Flash is not the same as conventional storage, the closest you could come to a low level format is to erase every block at the hardware level, and that would be difficult because all you have access to is the flash controller and have to play by its rules.

If the U3 removal tool doesn't work, you're pretty much stuck as far as I have seen. The U3 setup is partially implemented in hardware, so there's very little you can do about it with normal apps on your computer if it messes up somehow. It's really quite a stupid technology, it does strange and questionable things to a Windows computer, and has major security implications. Yeah it's a neat idea, just a bad implementation. My suggestion is to shitcan the thing and buy another flash drive, as cheap as they are now. Most U3 drives were 1GB, and that's about $5 now. Don't waste your time.

If there's a Micro Center near you, they have their own store brand of drives at the registers for checkout, a 4GB drive is about $9 now, buy as many or few as you like, and they have an unconditional lifetime warranty. Quality seems ok, I've got a dozen of them for various things, but you're not stupid enough to put your only copy of something on external storage, are you? I used to see it all the time back when I was in school that someone put their only copy of a paper on a floppy and it got zorked by a dirty drive in a school computer, or the disk got into the bottom of his bag with his books etc and it got damaged physically, or some other dumb thing.

[Petrus4]

If the U3 removal tool doesn't work, you're pretty much stuck as far as I have seen. The U3 setup is partially implemented in hardware, so there's very little you can do about it with normal apps on your computer if it messes up somehow. It's really quite a stupid technology, it does strange and questionable things to a Windows computer, and has major security implications. Yeah it's a neat idea, just a bad implementation. My suggestion is to shitcan the thing and buy another flash drive, as cheap as they are now. Most U3 drives were 1GB, and that's about $5 now. Don't waste your time.

Yeah my experience also, I have searched around for a solution and the closest I got was a UMPTOOL application which is used to redo a flashdrive, (probably flashed the firmware on the chip) but this did not recognize my flashdrive. Your right not worth further time investment for the price or a replacement.

ps : the cdfs partition is only 32MB and the flash part is about 945 MB

Thanks!

[Zorb]

You might want to give Sandisk's took a shot to try to recreate the U3 system then remove it again. No idea it it will work though. If not, PNY might have a utility though for that flash stick though, not sure. I really do hate PNY stuff though, because they have absolutely no support after the sale. I remember broken links on the drivers page for their USB cards (which you needed if you wanted USB 2 functionality because they didn't have a CD in the box!) and all sorts of other issues with them. BTW: PNY RAM is garbage.

[dick]

This site has a load of up to date tools.

Code:

flashboot.ru

[ARJ]

For me was no help from U3 program, ChipGenius, Hirens Boot CD with lot of tools and so on, but solution is simple :
You need next programs :
1. USBDeview to see flash vendor ID, this can be found http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usbdeview.zip
2. If your flash is SMI chip, you need SMI UFD utility, which can be found http://ftp.usboffice.kr/files/SMI_UFD_Utility.zip
3. If your flash is USBEST chip, you need UCDexec.exe, which is http://ftp.usboffice.kr/files/UCDExec.exe

Here is little forum about it http://blog.usboffice.kr/?p=146

I hope this info is helpful, at least this was working perfectly for me.