Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

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John Gray
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Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by John Gray »

I've been given a whole bunch of 'advertising' USB Flash Drives which have an approximately 10 MB CDFS partition with an Autorun.inf file and a bunch of PDFs, and a second 'ordinary' 46 MB partition.

I was hoping to combine both partitions into a single, slightly usable, 56 MB partition, more for academic reasons than practicality.

However, nothing I've tried or Googled will enable me to delete the CDFS partition. For example, Device Manager won't touch it, and GPartEd doesn't even see the Flash Drive.

I have seen comments that the firmware on the flash drive (didn't know they had any) is preventing changes.

Has anyone had any success with returning such a Flash Drive to normal use? Thanks!
John Gray

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DaveA
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Re: Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by DaveA »

I read some where the these advertising company that make the Flash drives, have a way that the partitions are permanent.
This way the company paying for the ad's will not be wasting their money.
I am so far behind, I think I am First :evilgrin:
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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mwolfman
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Re: Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by mwolfman »

Mike Wolfman

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StuartR
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Re: Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by StuartR »

mwolfman wrote:This help??
You'd have to be very brave to download a utility like that from a Chinese web site! I wouldn't have thought it was worth it just to unlock a very small USB drive.
StuartR


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John Gray
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Re: Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by John Gray »

Thanks Mike and Stuart - I previously found a greatly simplified version of that webpage, but didn't really fancy searching in Chinese, regardless of the potential problems which could have arisen! I shall just use the 46 MB partition, until I get bored with the lack of capacity...
John Gray

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stuck
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Re: Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by stuck »

Would DBAN work? Probably not, it for HDDs isn't it?

Ken

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John Gray
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Re: Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by John Gray »

DBAN is one of the list of programs which is reported not to work, sadly!
John Gray

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JoeP
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Re: Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by JoeP »

John Gray wrote:DBAN is one of the list of programs which is reported not to work, sadly!
See How do I uninstall U3 from my flash drive at Bring the power of portable software to your USB flash drive - make it a U3 smart drive!.

Joe
Joe

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John Gray
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Re: Cleaning up 'advertising' USB Flash Drive

Post by John Gray »

Joe - it's not a U3 installation, I'm afraid... I tried the U3 Launchpad uninstaller a few days ago, just for luck.
John Gray

Venison is quiet deer, and quite dear.