A Sandisk that connects by USB works just fine for your reset disk. Mine cost about $20.00 and I've had it for a long time. If you should Format your hard drive than you will need to update your Reset Disk. If you change your password your Reset Disk will still work without resetting it. If you normally don't use a password you will need to create a password before your computer will allow you to make a Reset Disk. The password can be removed and anyone does put a password in your computer without your knowledge your Reset Disk will allow you in to set a new password. This keeps other from blocking you from using your own PC. I helped someone who had this very same problem.

fwiw; Sandisk has U3 Launchpad Removal Tool Removal instructions Can I remove U3 technology from my USB drive? Yes. To remove the U3 technology from the drive, simply go to the U3 Launchpad and, under Settings, select U3 Launchpad settings and click Uninstall. This will completely remove the U3 Launchpad from the drive. Can I restore U3 technology after removing it? Yes. SanDiskÂs U3 website features a U3 Launchpad Installer utility that you can use to re-install the U3 Launchpad on the Cruzer smart drive.

I will tell you what I go with, for my internal drives I go with Western Digital Black Caviar drives they are more expensive usually but extremely good drives. The last one I got was a 500Gig Black Caviar which I believe I got through amazon. For my external drives I like seagate free agent pro, I like their warranty and features. western digital black caviar

One caution: Flash drives contain a "keep alive" battery. That battery may be good for 10 yrs or more, but it is one of the weak points. Beware that sometimes a store may have on sale older drives they wish to move off the shelf. Before you purchase a 'bargain' drive check its date of manufacture on the packaging. If the drive is 5 years old, it is better to buy a newer unit. The memory junctions do wear out. Those are good for about 10,000 writes and rewrites. That's old information so I expect there has been improvements, however, those will eventually wear out. Manufacturers have done a clever thing. internally, these drives contain a program that control writing process. To improve the life of the unit, the internal control shifts the partition and moves the write location so that with use the entire drive gets used, not just the front end. Most of the time, a drive has more space than what is stored on it, so shifting the data location extends life of the junctions by shifting the data location. These drives are just fine for data storage and composing letters with a word processor, or storing photos. I do not recommend using them for active gaming where thousands of rewrites occur during a game session. Its ok for storing the game's data file, but for playing, copy the data files to the hard drive and when the game is done, copy the new data files back to the flash dive.