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January 27, 2007

troubleshooting

Does OS X think your flash drive is a blank CD? Here’s the fix

Posted Jan. 27, ’07, 9:34 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Troubleshooting

Blank CD popupThis is, admittedly, a pretty specific case, but I figured it might help out anyone else who’s run into the problem. I picked up a SanDisk Cruzer flash drive recently, but I noticed something peculiar about it: every time I plugged it into my computer, a dialog box popped up saying I had inserted a blank CD-R, and asked what I wanted to do with it.

Now, the dialog box itself comes from System Preferences’s CDs & DVDs pane, but the question in my mind was: why does it think my flash drive is a blank CD-R? A trip to Google and I discovered that it has to do with a Windows program called U3 Launchpad that SanDisk and other manufacturers load on some flash drives. It relies on a separate read-only partition that will continue to exist, even if you reformat the flash drive (as I had tried already).

The solution? There is an uninstaller for U3, but it only works on Windows. So you’ll need to find a Windows box (or use Boot Camp—I’m not sure if Parallels USB support will work or not). Plug in your flash drive and run the program, and all will be taken care of. One caveat though: backup your data first. The U3 uninstaller offered to restore my data after the process, and then didn’t. Fortunately, there was nothing of vital importance on the drive.


7 Comments

b3 said:

If the system sees it as a blank CD-R, is there any way for iTunes to "burn" tracks to it?
If so, this might be an easy way to de-DRM your store bought tracks (with "acceptable" quality loss, i know).

January 27, 2007 10:03 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

An interesting idea, but I couldn't actually see the partition in the finder, and from what I read elsewhere, that partition may in fact be "read only." So I don't think it's possible.

January 27, 2007 10:24 AM
mark said:

That is strange. I have a 2GB Cruzer with the U3 partition on it and it works fine on my Macs (and windows). The U3 just shows up like a burned CD in my case--Not blank.

I like the U3 at work where I have to use windows. It allows me to run apps from that partition without "leaving any tracks". It also lets me encrypt things. Very handy.

January 27, 2007 4:17 PM
Luca said:

If the program is in a different partition, you may want to delete the partition altogether by using such a program as fdisk o cfdisk.

Formatting the usb-flash doesn't do the trick because OSX will format only the partition effectively mounted or seen, so not the hideous hidden partition.

January 27, 2007 5:30 PM
ChrisP said:

I have to use a SanDisk flash drive at my work for file transfers between different platforms. I ran into the same thing, tried to format and it didn't work. Basically I just dealt with it because the U3 software is actually really nice for a Windows user. The way XP handles USB flash drives is pretty lame. The U3 software provides people with an easy UI for people. Like a nice big eject button. Most of the window's user's here didn't know where or why they had to eject the drive before pulling it out. Mac users are so ahead of the curve, but we knew this.

January 27, 2007 5:44 PM
Bradley Dichter said:

Even if you can't see the partition, why can't you just select the device in Disk Utility and erase the whole thing? I'd make it Mac OS Extended if I was going to use it on Macs only.

January 27, 2007 9:21 PM
Ein said:

Just go into the System Preference under CDs & DVDs. Change the options in: When you insert a blank CD or DVD to "ignore".

That should get rid of the annoying message.

January 28, 2007 10:36 PM

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