Your USB flash drive can do a whole lot
more than just move data around. Transporting your data is probably
the most common use for a USB
flash drive. But there’s a world of
other things you can do with these
handy pocket-size drives. Here are
10 ways you can use that USB flash drive to do more than just move
data.
1: Run portable applications
In addition to storing your data, you
can run portable applications from a
USB flash drive. For example,
OpenOffice, which is a complete office
suite that includes a word processor,
spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package, and database, is
available as a portable application.
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are
also available as portable applications.
When you combine the office suite
with the ability to surf the Web and check email, you’ll be able to take your
most vital computing applications with
you wherever you go — right in your
pocket. If that’s not enough, you can choose
other applications to install on your
USB flash drive from PortableApps.com
(Figure A). You can even install an
entire prepackaged suite of
applications that includes such things as an audio player, games, an antivirus
utility, and a handy menu system Figure A The PortableApps.com suite comes
with a menu system to allow you to
easily access your portable
applications
2: Boot an operating system
If you want to do more than just run
your own applications, you might
want to consider booting an entire
operating system from your USB flash
drive. You can boot either Windows or
Linux from a USB flash drive; however, the process is not an exact science
and you may be in for a technical
adventure. Fortunately, there are some guides
you can follow. To learn how to boot
Windows XP from a USB flash drive, see
the article Creating a bootable USB
flash drive for Windows XP. To learn
how to boot a version of Linux from a USB flash drive, see the article Puppy
Linux teaches an old dog new tricks. 3: Connect to a wireless network
If
you have a wireless network, you
can use the Wireless Network Setup
Wizard in Windows XP or the Windows
Connect Now (WCN) feature built into
Vista to save wireless network
configuration information to a USB flash drive. You can then use your
drive to quickly and easily connect
another computer or a WCN-
compatible device, such as a router or
printer, to your wireless network. To
learn more about using the Wireless Network Setup Wizard, see the Help
And Support Center, which is
accessible from Windows XP’s Start
menu. To learn more about using the
Windows Connect Now feature, see
Windows Help And Support, which is accessible from Windows Vista’s Start
menu.
4: Create a password reset disk A password reset disk can really come
in handy if you forget the password to
your user account on a Windows
system that is not a part of a domain. If
you find yourself in that situation, you
can use the password reset disk to reset your password and quickly get
back into your user account. In
Windows Vista, you can use USB flash
drive rather than a floppy disk as a
password reset disk (Figure B). For
details on how to do so, see the article Create a Vista password reset disk
using a USB flash drive. Figure B You can use your USB flash drive as
a password reset disk. 5: Boost performance If you’re running Windows Vista, you
can use a USB flash drive to speed up
your system with the ReadyBoost
technology. ReadyBoost can use the
storage space on a USB Flash drive as
an additional memory cache to aid the memory cache on your hard disk. And
because flash memory is more
responsive than a hard disk, with its
physical moving parts, the memory
cache provided by ReadyBoost can
significantly improve system responsiveness. Using ReadyBoost is easy. You just
insert your USB flash drive into your
Vista system and follow the onscreen
prompts to configure and use
ReadyBoost. If you want more details,
check out the article How SuperFetch and ReadyBoost work together. 6: Manage it If all you really want to do with your
USB flash drive is transport data, and
you’re running Windows XP, you can
do so more efficiently with the
Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager
(Figure C). Once you have installed this manager, you can easily copy files to
and from your drive, back up and
restore the entire flash drive to and
from your hard disk, change the drive
label, and even create an autorun.inf
file to launch Drive Manager automatically when you plug in the
drive. To learn more about and
download the USB Flash Drive Manager
visit the Microsoft TechNet Magazine
site. Figure C Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager
provides you with a host of
features, such as drive backup. 7: Use it as an MP3 player Would you like to be listening to music
when you’re using a computer at the
office, but you don’t have an MP3
player? If so, you can use a USB flash
drive as an MP3 player along with
Windows Media Player and a set of headphones. Just copy your MP3 files
to your USB flash drive, plug it into
your computer, and direct Windows
Media Player to build a library of the
songs on your drive. You can use all of
Windows Media Player’s playback features, such as playlists and
favorites, to easily customize your
music listening experience. And best
of all, you won’t have to worry about
running low on battery power. 8: Password-protect it If you use a USB flash drive to
transport sensitive data that you
would prefer to protect from prying
eyes, should you lose the drive, Rohos
Mini Drive (Figure D) can safeguard
that data. This security tool allows you to create a secret partition on the drive
and then password-protect/encrypt
that partition, thus protecting any
documents you copy to that partition
via the utility’s file manager. You can
download (and read a review of) Rohos Mini Drive at Download.com. Figure D Using Rohos Mini Drive, you can
secure sensitive files on your USB
flash drive. 9: Run a Web site from it If you are a Web developer, you may
be interested to know that with
Server2Go, you can easily run a Web
server that supports Apache, PHP,
MySQL, and Perl right from a USB flash
drive. You can use Server2Go right out of the box without any installation. It
runs on all versions of Windows,
supports most common browsers, and
is completely free. To a developer, the
benefits of having a portable Web
server on a USB drive are numerous. For example, imagine being able to
carry a live Web site demo into a sales
pitch meeting. For more information
about this package, visit the Server2Go
site. 10: Lock your PC Have you ever seen a movie in which a
person in some secret government
installation simply inserts and removes
a card to log in and log out of a PC? If
you thought that idea was cool, you’ll
definitely want to investigate Predator (Figure E). Once installed and
configured, this little freeware utility
will allow you to turn a USB flash drive
into a key you can use to lock and
unlock your computer. Figure E With Predator, you can use a USB
flash drive as a key to lock and
unlock your computer. While the USB flash drive is connected
to your computer, everything works
as it normally would. Once you remove
the USB flash drive, your computer is
locked down — the keyboard and
mouse are disabled and the screen darkens. To unlock your computer,
you just plug in the USB flash drive and
the computer will be unlocked and
you can begin using it. To learn more
about Predator, and/or to download
it, visit the developer’s Web site.
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