PNY 2Gig Flash Drive with U3 Smart Technology won't show up?

[]V[]essenjah · Post by **[]V[]essenjah** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 2:34 pm

Hey, I was wondering about U3 technology? I bought a PNY 2Gig smart flash drive that had a piece of software called U3. I decided to experiment with the software. Apparently, you can install programs on it that supposedly run on any computer and cache right into the drive itself. I found a copy of Trillian and Firefox and figured, hey? Why not?

Anyway, I came home to transfer some data from my machine at home onto the drive but it doesn't seem to work? My other USB drives function just fine. Anyone have any ideas?

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 2:50 pm

Maybe it's trying to grab the same letter as another device. Try moving around a few removable drives to different letters.

[]V[]essenjah · Post by **[]V[]essenjah** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:00 pm

Nope. It's toast. I took it back to my work computer where I was setting it up. I plugged it in and nothing. It also doesn't light up. I hope Staples will replace it. :\\ I have a buddy that works there so hopefully he will let me return it. I bought it yesterday, it worked fine when I left. Drove to a couple of places, went back home, plugged it in, and nadda. :\\

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:11 pm

When you unplug it, do you just remove it from the USB port? if so, you shouldn't. you need to click that icon in the taskbar and tell it to \"safely remove it\" so it stops the power from going to it.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:29 pm

Merlin, USB drives shouldn't need that, and it definitely shouldn't nuke them if you don't do it. It is defective, take it back and get it replaced.

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 4:03 pm

Krom, I've read of people doing that and the drive becoming corrupted. So as a precaution, I always do waht I mentioned above. It takes 3 seconds to do.

[]V[]essenjah · Post by **[]V[]essenjah** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 4:10 pm

The DATA on the drive becomes corrupted. That's because, when they remove it, it's still doing something. If you run anything on the drive, you need to eject it. But if it's not writing anything and there isn't anything writing to it, there shouldn't be any problem. That is why you use the eject function first.

I almost always just eject it just in case, unless I'm in a big hurry.

It's defective.

[]V[]essenjah · Post by **[]V[]essenjah** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 6:42 pm

Also, anyone know if the U3 software can be downloaded if you reformat the drive?

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 8:01 pm

Staples will take it back within 14 days of purchase.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:14 pm

I have tested a bunch of USB thumbdrives recently. Settling on a 4GB Sandisk item the size of my thumbnail! Amazingly small.

One of the tests I did was to repeatedly plug and unplug the things from my powered USB HUB, and also from the front-ports on the PC, while read and write operations were in progress.

Windows tossed write/read errors - but apart from that, no issues at all. Certainly the data wasn't corrupted on the things, and the certainly remained operational.