U3 drive problem

[Walton Sumner]

The U3 developers here may find this interesting. I have a 1 GB U3
"GeekSquad" flash drive that worked this morning to transfer a file from a
PC to a Mac, it was gracefully removed from the Mac, and now neither PC nor
Mac recognizes the drive as valid, and both computers offer to reformat the
drive for me. My call to "1-800-Geeksqua(d)", printed on the side of my
flash drive, cannot be completed.

U3 web site describes trouble shooting for Launchpads not responding.

http://www.u3.com/support/faq.aspx#U3%20Launchpad1

Tried the directions, no improvement.

I will need to reformat and reinstall U3. I have another little flash drive,
so made space on it, downloaded the install .exe onto my Mac, copied to
little flash drive, copied to PC, removed small flash drive, double clicked
installer.

OK, I have to connect my Windows machine to the Internet, something I
meticulously avoid. Also, the driver I just downloaded does not recognize
any U3 compatible Sandisk device. Only works with Sandisk.

OK, Geeksquad site, search for U3. No matches. Hmm. But the number is
different: 800-433-5778.

Now I am supposed to have an account, must be the Best Buy records of my
shopping. The Geeksquad help line has a bunch of quasi MI themed recordings,
which are very relaxing to hear as precious minutes of grant preparation
time tick away, but at least I can type this...

So there is a Driver Finder section of the site, but it does not list
drivers for my GeekSquad branded USB flash drive, which has no other
manufacturer's name on it. So, the nice tech guy says to try "add/remove
hardware" and see if the manufacturer of the hardware appears.

Ah, there we go: 

"Best Buy Geek Squad" (functioning normally)

Not helpful. There is a microscopic serial number on this thing, which must
somehow identify a manufacturer: 5521IGO23082M202B1, which matches nothing
on Google, nor do likely substrings.

Maybe I still have the packaging from when I bought it a year ago? Um, no.
Sorry, my bad. Well, if I ever do find the manufacturer, I can go back to
GeekSquad to download the right driver:

http://www.geeksquad.com/tools/detail.aspx?id=441

Meanwhile, I have a 1 GB flash drive again, seems to work fine, acts like
nothing happened, never knew about U3. "U-who?" it says.

Seriously, it always seemed to me that when one of these U3 flash drives
crashed, the situation for resident software could be ugly - and the user
really perturbed that the program and data files are lost all at once, and
really frustrated trying to get going again. I can live without U3 services,
but if you depend on them, heads up! Be ready to confirm ownership and
restore promptly. 

Maybe mission critical U3 flash drives should be bought and sold in pairs.

Back to work...

Walt Sumner