Flash drives - crash?

[puckhead193]

I have a PNY 2 gig flash drive and sometimes when i plug it in windows and macs i get an error saying it can't load and sometimes nothing happens at all. After i remove it, it seems to work.
Do flash drives tend to give out after a while? I don't want to one day loose all my stuff.
Also is their any way to get rid of this u3 smart crap... its so annoying!

 

[~Shard~]

You can only write to a flash drive so many times, but we're talking in the tens of thousands I'm sure, so this shouldn't be your issue. I am not aware of any other common issues wrt flash memory, so perhaps the chip itself is simply damaged/defective...

 

[blodwyn]

Also is their any way to get rid of this u3 smart crap... its so annoying!

Quoting from an entry I found on an arstechnica forum -

"To remove and delete the U3 Launchpad, you need to download U3 Launchpad uninstallers or U3 Launchpad Removal Tool that remove the U3 Launchpad and re-configure the USB drive to be a single mass storage USB drive. Currently, U3 Launchpad uninstallers are only available for and must be run on Windows XP or Windows 2000 machine. When uninstalling, the U3 smart drives USB device has to be plugged in with U3 Launchpad running.

U3 Launchpad Removal Tool for SanDisk USB U3 devices can be downloaded here(http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/u3/launchpadremoval.exe) , while all other U3 smart drives can used universal U3 Launchpad Removel Uninstaller downloadable from U3.

WARNING: U3 Launchpad removal is irreversible. You won't be able to install U3 again. Beside, backup your data before begin uninstallation process as ALL data will be erased"