[Cialug] OT: Not that you needed another reason to hate maxtor

[Nathan Stien]

On Nov 19, 2007 5:55 PM, Brandon Griffis <brandongriffis at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is something to be aware of and careful with too.  Many external HD and
> even flash drives now not only come preformatted but with an autorun file
> that will automatically install (something) onto windows just for plugging
> in the drive.  We're often told it's just a little utility to make the drive
> show up with a WD or Segate or Maxtor or... icon.  But I wouldn't doubt that
> various spy/virus stuff has been thrown in as well.

Yeah, now that you mention it, I once made the mistake of buying a
flash drive which had a craptastic autorunning app on it, and it was a
PITA to remove.  When I have a long term relationship with a windows
machine, I tend to disable autorun at the OS level, but if I would
take the USB drive to someone else's machine, this stupid app would
start up.  It mounted as an auto-running USB CD drive (read only!) in
addition to the regular USB mass storage drive.  Removing the fake
logical CD drive required running some special windows .exe buried on
their website.  Bah.

- Nathan