u3 and OS X

I never thought that getting a brand-new USB key to work could turn into a configuration nightmare, requiring trips to four separate utilities and two operating systems. This is what happened last week with the SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2GB USB Flash Drive. This USB key uses a SanDisk-developed technology called U3 (obnoxiously marketed with the slogan “It’s what’s next. It’s what’s smart.”) What this piece of code does is allow Windows XP users to launch applications directly from the USB key, therefore allowing them to "leave no personal data behind". Unfortunately, not only is this a Windows-enhanced technology, it is actually incompatible with Mac OS X. And getting this thing to work on Apple’s OS is an exercise in frustration. The whole idea of a USB key was to replace portable rewritable media like floppy disks, which were universal in their hardware implementation (regardless of OS-specific formatting and file-system). This was true for USB keys as well, at least until U3 arrived.

When you plug a U3-enabled USB key into your Mac, what you get is the (expected) disk image, accompanied by a second icon, a CD image, called "U3". If you’re like me, you buy this thing to quickly get a couple of portable gigabytes of storage, and the last thing you want to care about are "enhancements". It’s like buying a hard drive (or, if memory serves, a floppy disk): you just want to connect it and format it for the file system you’ll be using. But what happens after a quick formatting trip to the OS X Disk Utility is that you’re left with an unusable piece of plastic. No matter what you do, you’re stuck with a drive that won’t mount and, more annoyingly, can neither be erased nor partitioned. The USB key is now read-only. Plugging it into a Windows machine, downloading "uninstallers" from the SanDisk website, cursing the innovation-obsessed IT market, whatever you do, the key is dead. Even the Launchpad Remover, distributed on the U3 website, won’t be able to do anything with it. It’s important to note that this is not a SanDisk-only problem; it happens on several (maybe all) models of U3-enabled keys.

The outrageous part of all this is that while the packaging clearly claims Mac OS X compatibility, as you can see on the left, an angry trip to the SanDisk support website is all that’s needed in order to find out that the very same manufacturer actually states the opposite. This is an ancient way of making quick money: sell something which you acknowledge doesn’t do what you say it does. I wrote an email to SanDisk customer support about this glaring inconsistency between their own two statements. Their reply, which arrived surprisingly fast, suggests that they might rethink either the technology, the packaging or their marketing information in the future, which is a good thing:

The U3 part of your Cruzers are not supported on MACs, but the removable drive part will work and is supported on MAC computers. We would like to thank you for pointing this out to our attention. We have already forwarded this information to the proper personnel for review.

As of now, we cannot give you a definitive answer concerning the matters you have presented but rest assured that the personnel for this matter will greatly consider it for our product improvement.

And since I’d rather not wait for the SanDisk product improvement team to fix this, I searched the internet again, and again, and finally found a post on the Canadian ehMac forum. The author, Mark Rushton, had the exact same problem with the GXT Mobile Disk USB 2.0, and posted a quick and (almost) hassle-free solution. All you need is a Windows machine (I found one which had Parallels Desktop installed and it worked fine) and the Drive Key Boot Utility from HP (45mb download, no registration required). Just plug your dead USB key into a Windows XP machine (real or virtual), run the app, click through all the recommended options and let the software pulverize the drive’s U3 enhancements into oblivion. Don’t worry if it takes several minutes (with no progress bar) or if the program stops responding; just wait until it’s finished. Go back to the Mac OS Disk Utility and do whatever you want with your new, fully functional USB flash drive (which is what you wanted in the first place). Thanks Mark.

UPDATE: Apparently it’s possible to accomplish the above using Terminal without downloading anything, as suggested by Damien in a comment to this post. I haven’t tested it myself but it does seem to be a very simple solution. Thanks Damien.