I've come up with a pretty good temporary workaround!
I am using WinXP Pro SP1.
1. Plug in the key if not in already; close the popup window if not closed already.
2. Go to My Computer.
3. Right-click on the icon for the unwanted IBM partition, and go to "properties".
4. Choose the "hardware" tab at the top.
5. In the box, highlight the "USB Disk 2.0 USB device" entry that is recognized as an optical drive under the "Types" column (in my system, a DVD/CD-RW drive, but I assume this may vary) and click the "properties" button. Double-check that your selection does not say "disk drives" under the "Types" column--that's the usable 25.4mb partition.
6. In the resulting window, pull down the "Device usage" box at the very bottom and choose "Do not use this device in any hardware profiles (disable)", then click OK.
7. You'll be prompted to reboot; do so.
Upon reboot, only the usable 25.4mb portion is presented--the IBM info partition is completely hidden, and you get no pop-up hassles whenever you plug in the key! :thumbsup: Of course, this one-time process needs to be done on each host (and probably each USB port) the key is used on. And it does also eat a drive letter (the one the IBM partition would use if not disabled).
Hope that helps...