10 Best Uses For A Usb Pen Drive

[rajanmehta 4,056]

The humble pen drive has been around for a long time. Prices have never been cheaper, and larger capacities are easily available too. If you're a computer user, you probably have several of them. Apart from using them to just transport your data, there are a myriad other uses for one, as long as you have a one with a decent capacity and speed. For most of these uses, a 2GB drive (prices start at Rs 250) is more than sufficient, though as is always the case with digital storage, more the merrier!

Run PortableApps

PortableApps is a Windows launcher that can run entirely from your USB drive. What this means is that you can carry a suite of all your favorite applications like Firefox, Chrome, VLC Media Player , Foxit Reader, 7-Zip and more, all on the drive. Plug it into any remote computer and you'll have all your favorite applications with you. All you have to do is head to the website and download the PortableApps program. There are even pre-selected app bundles available for download.

Get it from www.portableapps.com

Computer maintenance & troubleshooting

A USB drive can play host to various applications that can help fix, maintain or troubleshoot a computer in need. First, you can start with Trend Micro's HouseCall or Kaspersky's virus removal tool. Glary Utilities can be run to do a complete maintenance check (registry clean, removal of temporary files, manage startup programs). Finally, Ultimate Defrag can be used organise the files for better speed and reliability.

Get all the apps from www.pendriveapps.com

Run an alternate operating system

Linux and various versions of it are available for free. But some special versions of Linux like Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and Xubuntu are small and light enough to be run completely from a USB drive. This means that you can run and check out Linux for yourself on any existing Windows computer, without making any changes to it! The added advantages of these 'Live' builds of Linux is that they have very minimal hardware requirements, which makes them blazing fast, even on older machines.

Get them from www.puppylinux.org, www.damnsmalllinux.org, www.xubuntu.org

Automated backup of selected folders

You may have a 500GB hard drive in your computer, but the most important data to you on that drive will be lesser. It could be a folder of your photographs, videos, songs or important documents. Rather than take a complete backup of the drive which is a time-consuming process, you can use Microsoft's SyncToy to selectively backup and synchronise certain folders between the hard drive and an external USB flash drive. Once configured, all you have to do is plug the drive in to backup the folder.

Get it from: http://goo.gl/Zz77V

Run a complete media player

XBMC (Xbox Media Center) started out as media center for the Microsoft Xbox , but is now versatile software for PCs to playback multiple formats of multimedia files in a slick interface. XBMC Live is a special version, designed to run from USB drives and it can be used to run a pre-configured version of XBMC on any machine for demo purposes. Pretty much anyone who sees the Live version gets the full version instantly.

Get it from: http://xbmc.org/download

Encrypted Data with self-destruct feature

If you're paranoid about someone stealing data from your USB drive, you can secure the data with USB SafeGuard. It encrypts data on the drive with advanced AES 256-bit encryption. You can assign a password to selected folders or to the entire drive. And there's a setting that can erase the entire contents of the drive if someone enters a wrong password too many times.

Get it from http://usbsafeguard.altervista.org

Work securely on a remote computer

Democrakey offers a suite of handy applications that you can store and run from your USB drive. When you are away from your own PC and want to use the Internet on an unknown PC, Democrakey can keep your data and information safe. It includes the Tor Browser (for anonymous web browsing), Clamwin (to check the PC for viruses), AbiWord (to read Word documents) Thunderbird Portable (with pre-installed add-ons to send anonymous email) and TrueCrypt (for file encryption).

Get it from www.democrakey.com

Increase performance with Ready Boost

With Windows Vista and Windows 7, if you have a fast enough USB flash drive, you can use it for Ready Boost. Ready Boost is a feature that uses the space on your USB drive as extra RAM , instantly boosting the overall speed of your Windows system and programs. Not all USB drives are fast enough to be used for Ready Boost. To check, right click on the drive's icon in My Computer, click Tools and then the Ready Boost tab.

For more information: http://goo.gl/JztRI

Use it as a 'key' to access several PCs

You might have seen this before in the movies; a USB drive is inserted into a computer and it immediately springs to life. A free application called Predator can be used for exactly the same thing. Download and install Predator, and pair a USB drive with it. With the USB drive plugged in, you can continue to work, but as soon as it is removed, the screen darkens, the computer locks, and keyboard/mouse input is disabled. Plug it back in, and normal usage is restored.

Get it from: www .montpellier-informatique.com/predator

Make a "life-backup"

This can literally be a life saver. Many of us may have not stopped to think about what would happen if we lost all our belongings in a fire, flood or natural calamity. The size and portability of a USB flash drive is actually ideal to store digital copies of all your important documents like bank information, credit card details, birth certificates, legal papers, insurance papers and anything else that ties into yours or your family's life. Be sure to keep one away at in a locker or at a friend's place in another city for extra peace of mind.

Source: Economic Times

Edited December 20, 2010 by rajanmehta

[situ1962 21]

Thanks for the info.

[Genius 817]

Nice info keep it up bro, and I am using Tapatalk as I told u.

[::Hitesh:: 1,763]

you can add Windows in point no -3, (ultimate boot disk )

[rajanmehta 4,056]

OFF TOPIC

@Hiteshbhai

You have added in your signature the speedtest result of your mobile. But my Kaspersky antivirus is giving the following message whenever i open any thread where you have posted and is blocking your speedtest image to be displayed in your signature. Please investigate.

Downloading object, Containing malicious URL. Denied.

Object: http://www.mobilespe.../1121081778.jpg

Reason: URL found in the database

Result: Denied: http://www.mobilespe.../1121081778.jpg (analysis using the database of suspicious URLs)

Edited December 20, 2010 by rajanmehta

[::Hitesh:: 1,763]

^^^

Dont know but its just an image , may be K'sky antivirus giving problem to this website http://www.mobilespeedtest.com

ok will upload same image to some other server

thanks

EDIT:- Now i have uploaded image to tinypic.com,

abhi to thik hai bhai ?

Edited December 20, 2010 by ::Hitesh::

[rajanmehta 4,056]

^^^ Yes. Nice and Clean. 1778 KBPS :Sorprendido:

[Shabz 8]

how do you run windows from a usb drive

[Genius 817]

how do you run windows from a usb drive

Google it u will see many

[parin 857]

Really nice info keep it up brother

[Honest 836]

Great piece of information dear Rajan Brother.

+1

[Rahul Always 87]

Thanks for the info. There were certain things about pen drives which I certainly didnt know. And glad to see that this Rimweb is more than just mobiles!

[dr.faramroze 703]

Dear All, I wish to suggest that since newer built Android and Windows phone operates best on newer SD cards, which are classified according to class. For eg. Sandisk 4GB class 6 and Verbatim 8GB class 10. The more the class digit, higher and smoother data transfer and cache limit. Android phones recommends class 4/6/10 to give ultimate experience. They are really not easy to get from the stores. The storekeeper will proudly give class 2 memory, which may not give desired results. Someone can put them up for sale on RIMWEB. Mods please move my post somewhere else if needed.

Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk

[drsandyppc 6]

written well! Thanks a lot!!

[rajanmehta 4,056]

How To Create A Secret Partition On A Pen Drive >> http://tech2.in.com/...en-drive/275822

[rbdhoot 11]

Nice info. Thanks alot.

[ami1 237]

How To Create A Secret Partition On A Pen Drive >> http://tech2.in.com/...en-drive/275822

Simpler way is to create 2nd partition with gparted in any linux distro, format it as ext2 or ext3 and install ext2fs in windows to read

If you are not using linux or don't want to download any large CD image for Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora etc then you can do the following:-

1. Download gparted live cd/usb here (124mb only) and write it to a CD (or use unetbootin to make a bootable usb pendrive)

2. Boot from this pendrive or cd and use gparted application to make 2 partitions and Format one as fat32/ntfs and 2nd as EXT2

3. Install EXT2 IFS in Windows to mount the 2nd partition whenever you want to access it. (in linux you can mount all partitions anyway)

Some other Options:

If you want to use ext3 format (for 2nd partition) then make sure to use the -i 128 option with mkfs.ext3 for it to be readable/writeable in windows with EXT2 IFS. If you really want to use EXT3/EXT4 partition then use ext2fsd

If you want to use only FAT32/NTFS then you can use it in windows by first marking the 2nd partition as Active in gparted. (you will have to mark the 1st partition as active whenever you want to use that in windows. Windows only reads the active partition for removable usb drives)

For those who haven't worked with partitions much:

BE VERY CAREFUL WITH GPARTED - DON'T END UP PARTITIONING OR FORMATTING YOU HARD DRIVE BY MISTAKE.

ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK THAT ITS THE PENDRIVE YOU ARE PARTITIONING/FORMATTING & NOT SOME OTHER HARD DISK.