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What is this U3 that came with my new USB drive?

What is this U3 that came with my new USB drive?

I just purchased a new 16GB Sandisk Cruzer USB drive, it has drive that it mounts called U3. It is windows only and I downloaded the Cruzer utilities for mac to remove them.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 347
Total answers/comments: 1
Guest [Entry]

"From the Wikipedia article on U3:

U3 is a company producing a
proprietary method of auto-launching
applications from specially formatted
USB flash drives. Flash drives
adhering to the U3 specification are
termed ""U3 smart drives"". U3 smart
drives come preinstalled with the U3
Launchpad, which looks similar to the
Windows OS start menu and controls
program installation. The method works
with recent Microsoft Windows systems
only. Applications which comply with
U3 specifications are allowed to write
files or registry information to the
host computer, but they must remove
this information when the flash drive
is ejected. Customizations and
settings are instead stored with the
application on the flash drive.

I don't personally use the U3 software, but some less technologically-inclined people in my office appreciate having the file management built into their flash drive. You can also install portable applications onto the drive, but again, I find it easier to maintain my flash drives myself and use http://portableapps.com/."