U3 USB Drives

[co1dfus1on]

Hi all,

Does anyone here know how to make a normal non-U3 USB pen/drive/whatever into a U3 drive? (Check wikipedia and hak.5 if you don't know what U3 is) I got the impression from various forums on other sites that it involved doing something with the boot sector but I didn't really understand what.

[awesomegamer]

I had one and I just wanted to use it without any extra features. Don't remember exactly but I just deleted everything on it, reformatted it, and then it worked. Don't take my word for it though, I probably did something stupid and was lucky it worked.

[co1dfus1on]

I had one and I just wanted to use it without any extra features. Don't remember exactly but I just deleted everything on it, reformatted it, and then it worked. Don't take my word for it though, I probably did something stupid and was lucky it worked.

 

That's not what I want, I want to make a NON-u3 drive so that it has u3 on it, not to get rid of u3 on a u3 drive (why would you do that?!)

[Van]

Well, I'm not entirely knowledgeable on the subject, but I did do a Google search.

 

I found an interesting website/forum that had a guy who I suppose did what you are trying to do.

 

You can find the website here:

 

U3 on NON U3 Drive

 

 

The only problem I can see with this is that it requires that you already have a U3 drive (possibly defeating the entire purpose).

But, it may still be good for you to read.

 

 

- ArceRC

- Van

[co1dfus1on]

Well, I'm not entirely knowledgeable on the subject, but I did do a Google search.

 

I found an interesting website/forum that had a guy who I suppose did what you are trying to do.

 

You can find the website here:

 

U3 on NON U3 Drive

 

 

The only problem I can see with this is that it requires that you already have a U3 drive (possibly defeating the entire purpose).

But, it may still be good for you to read.

 

 

- ArceRC

- Van

 

Yeah... I do have a drive that works like U3 (which a friend gave to me), but it seems that it is like, "fake" U3 and isn't recognised by universal customizer as featured in that article.

[Golden Tiger]

I have a U3 drive and other than Skype I haven't found too many U3 only programs that interest me. Also, I was under the impression that the U3 software was designed NOT to install on normal drives for licensing reasons and for some silly technical reason too. You can remove U3 from a U3 drive but reinstalling is rather difficult too.

 

There are other programs available that install on any jump drive that does U3 like stuff (such as running applications off the jump drive that were not installed on the computer). Portable Apps is one that comes to mind although the program selection is somewhat limited. Linky is below.

 

http://portableapps.com/

 

The programs that install through U3 or Portable Apps have to be designed to run without installation, without writing files to the jump drive often, and to not leave any clutter on the machine you run it on. Due to those limitations, there isn't a huge amount of software available. U3 tends to support pay software and more commercial software while freeware solutions such as Portable Apps tend to support open source programs.

 

I say that you should look into the free solutions first to see if they offer what you want. Portable Apps' software listing is on their page and U3's software listing is at the link below.

 

http://software.u3.com/softwarecentral.aspx?skip=1

 

If you need U3, I recommend that you get the cheapest U3 drive that you can. You can always carry around the non-U3 drive and transfer files to it if necessary. On the whole, jump drives are cheap enough so that you can purchase another one without too much difficulty. Still, I prefer the free solution as possible and you might too.

 

I have Portable Apps installed on my U3 drive so I kinda have the best of both worlds. Still, I don't use either launcher all that much. If I need to use them, they are there... I suppose.