I have had SEVERAL Sandisk devices - both RS-MMC and SD - die on me. One day they are fine, the next day they are deader than fsck - to the point that putting them into a USB reader either a) causes the reader's firmware to crash, requiring it to be disconnected from USB to reset it, or b) has no effect, the reader doesn't even recognize there was a device inserted.
These devices were NOT constantly being inserted and removed from a device, so ESD is unlikely, nor were they being written to constantly, so exceeding the number of write cycles is also unlikely (and with modern flash devices have over 100K writes per cell, and having embedded wear leveling, the time to exceed the cycle life for a device is VERY large - this isn't like the old Series I flash, a fact that embedded systems designers like me appreciate VERY MUCH.)
I've personally "flipped the bozo bit" on Sandisk - I will not buy their products nor recommend them to others.
Then there's this whole "Let's put a bunch of crap on the disk, and have it auto-run and auto-install on Windows, and NOT let you delete it except with our special little tool, which, by the way, ONLY runs under Windows" BS. If you guys want to pre-load the disk with stuff, fine. If I delete it, THEN I DON'T WANT IT. Don't "helpfully" restore it the next time it gets inserted into a Windows machine - I didn't type "rm -rf /media/memorystick/*" accidentally.
And BTW, Sandisk actually had to work around an aspect of Window's security to make this work (and yes, I actually put "Windows" and "security" into the same sentence without the phrase "complete absence of". It's a rare enough occurrence. Note it on your calendars.). You see, normally WindowsXP will autorun ONLY CDs and DVDs, not floppies or USB mass storage devices, because so many people beat up on Microsoft for the security risks thereof. So now-a-days, by default WinXP will only autorun files located on devices which identify themselves as CDROM/DVDROM devices. You see, at the lowest levels, IDE, USB and Firewire act like they are SCSI devices: they use the same command structures, just a different transport mechanism. Under SCSI, a block device like a disk drive identifies itself as one type of device, while a CDROM identifies itself as a completely different type of device. WinXP will autorun data on the latter, not the former.
So what Sandisk did was to have the Cruzer identify itself as 2 devices - one a block device (the main flash device) and one as a CD device (actually, as a DVD/CDROM writer, of all things!), which contains all their crapware. That way, as far as Windows is concerned the thumb drive is a USB connected CDROM drive, and the data on it is fair game for auto-execution.
Bastards!
And as for buying thumb drives - even with shipping and handling, NewEgg (
http://www.newegg.com) has MUCH better prices than any walk-in store I've seen.