Can anyone explain it to me? I have a SanDisk flash drive, and it always asks me if I want to keep U3 on this drive, and I always click "I'm not sure, please ask me later" because I keep putting off figuring out what it does. So can anyone enlighten me about how it works and what I can do with it? Would be much appreciated. Thanks.
I have a U3, and when I got it, I looked at the software, and decided it wasn't worth having, so I used a special utility to totally format the pen and now it just works as a generic USB pen. I can't remember what the software did though, I think it was encryption and password tools and alike.
looks as if, it acts like some kinda application launcher with all your data in one place when moving computer to computer.
U3 is a specific type of USB drive that includes a CDROM partition which is read only and a read/write partition for storing your data. The CDROM partition includes the U3 launchpad and forces the autoplay/autorun whenever it's plugged in....thus your frustration. You can't undo the U3 software because it's on the CDROM partition you cannot remove...at least not without the utility SanDisk provides. The utility re-writes the firmware inside the IC controller chip inside the USB stick. Once the firmware is re-written, it removes the CDROM partition and thus you end up with a general USB stick. For a bit more info on the U3 drive here is a good article/summary: ยป Install U3 On a Flash Drive BTW - Microsoft owns U3 now, not SanDisk.
