on USB drives usage on Dingo and Ermine

I have an U3-enabled (remember? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U3) USB jump drive (16 GB) which I used extensively between many computers. I also used it on PE w/ Dingo, it was slight delay, but worked plug-n-play. When I upgraded to Ermine, the same drive no longer recognized, however other USBs (not U3) are still work (and recognized faster than on dingo). And if I power PE off with U3 drive and then turn it on again, it gets recognized... This is not a size, as another 16G USB (not U3) works fine on both Dingo and Ermine.

I think you will find it is the U3 part of the USB stick that is the problem.

U3 is an emulated CD drive that is set to load various embedded apps with the remainder of the space available for data. This system works with windows but not with anything else I've found - linux and OS/2 ignore the U3 part and just see the data partition. Unfortunately the one U3 stick I have has had the U3 part removed si I'm unable to test and see what is going on when it is plugged into an EE. I do know that I can read a real CD if it is attached via USB - at least my home made USB CD adapter works for me.

From personal use U3 is really quite crappy, and you would be better off switching to something like portable apps(free and doesn't require the CD-emulating chip in the flash drive, so if you end up switching you just have to copy paste your files). The only interesting thing I've seen from a U3 drive was an autoplay virus based around the fact that U3 can autoplay without asking... removing U3 isn't fun either(at least it wasnt when I did it, may be easier now though...) This might not fix your problem though, but its worth a shot...

Thanks for your advices, I actually long switched to portable apps on my 500 Gb drive (PE cannot read that though), just use that U3 drive for data. Did not have time to remove U3, will do it sooner or later anyway.. Cool tip about using real CD through CD adapter, ivan, can you elaborate on that?

Originally Posted by larka2006

Thanks for your advices, I actually long switched to portable apps on my 500 Gb drive (PE cannot read that though), just use that U3 drive for data. Did not have time to remove U3, will do it sooner or later anyway.. Cool tip about using real CD through CD adapter, ivan, can you elaborate on that?

basically there is a chip in the drive aside from the storage that when plugged into the computer makes the computer think that the drive is actually a CD drive, this allows U3 to use the autoplay features on computers that don't work with autoplay on flash drives(almost every computer will run autoplay files from a CD, but very few if any will run autoplay files from a flash drive, for safety reasons mostly).

Hi Larka2006,

The CD drive is one I assembled from various parts that I usually have about the place - in my spare time (I'm supposed to be retired but work harder now than before) I look after our computer systems and server including building special equipment.

The CD drive is a DVD writer from a notebook with an adapter to give a standard IDE output, that is then mated to a USB / IDE / ASTA adapter as well as a 12v 2A power supply. The general idea is that I can then attach hard disks to any of our computers for recovery work and the CD allows me to transfer disk images.

We had a discussion here about the EE seeing USB hard disks and out of curiosity I tried the CD and found it too works for me but I can't guarantee it will work for others as it is very non standard.