7 Interesting and Useful Things to do with your USB Pen Drive
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If you’ve got a USB Pen Drive, you can use it for a variety of things, that includes adding portable apps and lots more.
But, your Pen Drive can serve some interesting purposes as well - some you wouldn’t have imagined about. Put it to some good use, here’s a quick list of what you can do with it:
1. Install a Linux Distro
Pen Drive Linux guides you through procedures on loading your USB Drive with a Linux Distro. If you’re a geek, you’ll love this setup. If you’re just a normal user, this may come to your use in a variety of situations - you go to a friend’s computer, which is infected with pesky viruses. You need not worry, boot with your Linux-loaded pen drive and do your job, safe and secure.
2. Install MojoPac
I usually don’t recommend software that you’ll have to pay for using, but this one is something I can’t resist myself from recommending to you dear readers. Yes, this is a wonderful app that’ll install itself into a pen drive, and run on top of Windows. You can run your favourite Windows apps, most of them run perfect on this MojoPac layer. The advantage is that none of the modified settings affect the original Windows over which your MojoPac is running on. Quite cool, isn’t it?
3. Automatic Backups
You’re probably using your USB Pen Drive as a backup device to hold your important documents, but why not make the process easier? Install Allway Sync or Microsoft SyncToy. Both can let you sync files on your computer with your USB Pen Drive with ease. You don’t have to do manual copy & paste files - just insert, click and you’re done.
4. Additional Memory
Vista can use your USB Flash Drive just like your RAM - such a capability is integrated into the OS. Windows XP just can’t use it as additional memory - your flash drive is just a flash drive. Not anymore if you have eBoostr installed. This software program aids XP in using your Flash Drive as a memory device. You might want to give this a try if your computer is hungry on resources and needs some speed boost.
5. Perfect for Gifts
Indeed, these funky USB Drives are perfect for gifts. There are lots of creative things you could do with it, and then present it to your loved one. If your friend is a businessman/freelancer who has to work with multiple computers, a USB Pen Drive can serve as a perfect gift for the person will have files to carry around. In case your close friend is just a casual user, you could load it with some photos and gift it to that person. Get a pen drive, put your photos in, let them autorun as a surprise when the thumb drive is put in.
6. Exhibit your Skills
Are you a computer/web based worker? Chances are you want to exhibit your skills - what you’ve done in the past. Why not load them on to your USB Drive? For instance, if you’re a graphic designer - you could use it to present your skills, stuff that you’ve worked on in the past and show it off to your clients. Probably, they might hire you right away 
(Thanks Skellie)
7. Enjoy Music, hassle free
If you’re a serious audiophile, and still got to work in multiple computers, accessing your music collection can be painful. But there’s Winamp to the rescue. You can use Winamp to put your music collection in your USB thumb drive, all still organized and easily accessible. Winamp Portable Edition makes your media library portable, and organized for hassle free listening.
Anything else you can think of?
58 Comments, Comment or Ping
Syahid A.
wow, no.4 is totally cool. great list shankar!
Feb 25th, 2008
Brown Baron
eBoostr looks very interesting. Nice find buddy.
Feb 25th, 2008
Brian
MojoPac is free.
Feb 25th, 2008
magicdot
eBoostr will only give gains w/ vista loaded on 1 gig or less of memory.
Feb 25th, 2008
wringo
in what time do you live to fit your music collection on a single usb stick?
Feb 25th, 2008
Chris
Wringo….
I have a 4 gig usb stick. That holds more than enough music for me. How long are you expecting to be away from home? 4 gig of music would last for hours…..
Feb 25th, 2008
wringo
yeah, 4 gigs… right. that would be a selection, not a collection.
Feb 25th, 2008
foldered
Indeed a selection, and a small one at that. If I was going to work on another computer (which I assume I would be working on for hours), 4 gigs isn’t nearly enough to keep me satisfied, let alone the fact that that wouldn’t be all that is on my memory stick.
My 160GB iPod suits me just fine, though.
Feb 25th, 2008
Matthew Daly
#1 is a really good suggestion, and Pendrive Linux is a great site. My personal recommendation for a good Linux distro to install to a USB pen drive is Linux Mint, as it’s closely based on Ubuntu so you can use the instructions for Ubuntu, it includes all the multimedia codecs already, and looks great too. I installed it to a 2GB pen drive the other day and I sometimes use it to show people things like Compiz-Fusion.
Feb 25th, 2008
ReviewSaurus
cool post! stumbled
Feb 25th, 2008
John Gathercole
I use Portable Apps — a fantastic suite of portable programs. You can run the entire OpenOffice suite, plus Firefox, VLC, 7zip, Clamwin (to scan your stick or the host computer), Sumatra, and a whole lot more. Plus, it’s free.
Feb 25th, 2008
BullDozer
about #4 and size issues, i use a small external 160 gigs drive so size doesn’t matter for me.
the thing i like the most is using portable apps like http://portableapps.com and there is another great place for portable apps http://www.portablefreeware.com/
Feb 25th, 2008
Demono
@foldered
4GB = 1000 songs at standard mp3 quality. About 50 HOURS of music straight Even if you cut that to 500 of songs if you’re spoiled listening to audio frequencies you can’t even naturally hear, thats still over a full day of music with nothing repeating. If that isn’t enough for you, maybe you should start collecting music you actually listen to rather than downloading entire albums for a single song, just so you can say you have the whole album.
Feb 25th, 2008
GreenLantern
I use my thumb drive to carry around a browser (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable). That way I can always use firefox, and it’s always set up just the way I want, no matter what computer I am using.
Feb 25th, 2008
Madhur Kapoor
I think i should try installing Linux in mine. Stumbled
Feb 26th, 2008
Shashank
Great post stumbled!
Feb 26th, 2008
HA
you I pod guys are funny. I couldn’t even name a 1000 songs I even like let alone listen to them all. 4 gig is quite enough!
Feb 26th, 2008
lobster
I took Firefox PE to school so I could get to the internet settings, set up a proxy, and browse without my administration having a clue to what I’m doing. My administration is a bitch, trust me.
Feb 26th, 2008
QJ
Just read #7
good idea
could work on the grammar though. . . it was painful reading it
Feb 26th, 2008
Nirmal
Strangely I do not us emy USB for anything mentioned above.
Stumbled.
Feb 27th, 2008
Milander
I use a USB hub port, it can take 12 pen drives. Using my 2 GB pen/flash drives I add 24 GB of either memory or storage.
These devices are the greatest things since sliced bread. I use mine to carry alternative OP sys and entertainment. Last week I was watching the Bourne series of films on my friends home cinema from 4 sticks plugged into his projector. DVDs were ripped whole naturally.
A friend of mine who travels very often and loves star trek (yes, we are geeks) takes his entire collection around with him on 14 pen drives. Quality is kinda not good but he watches it on his phone, yes it has a USB port.
4 GB is plenty for music, but seriously not enough for video. You guys should go out and buy some of the mini HDD, 120GB the size of a zippo lighter. Go spend a bit more then watch ripped DVDs on your mobile phone.
Feb 27th, 2008
Ashwin
Cool post! But these days it’s Virus that’s spreading thro the Pen Drives.
Feb 27th, 2008
Rakshit
Very informative post.
Stumbled!!!
Feb 27th, 2008
ravishankar
test comment
Feb 28th, 2008
Open Source Depot
I notice that you mentioned portable winamp, don’t forget the other portable apps and their framework. Go to portableapps.com and check it out. You can have fully portable (no install) versions of most of your applications running straight from the usb stick. All free of course.
Mar 1st, 2008
Sumesh
#4 should be used sparingly - USB drives have small read/write cycle life, and use it too much and it’ll be dead quickly.
Mar 2nd, 2008
M G
Use it as an automated password stealer
http://wiki.hak5.org/wiki/USB_Switchblade
Mar 6th, 2008
Shankar Ganesh
@Sumesh: You have a point there.
@Ashwin: Yeah, most of the pen drives from my classmates contain trojans.
Mar 7th, 2008
Shankar Ganesh
@Madhur, Shashank: Thanks for the stumble.
Everybody else, thanks for dropping by to leave your valuable comments. Much appreciated
Mar 7th, 2008
Ed
Wow! Great stumble…
I didn’t know ’bout #4..
I’m gonna use that alot from now on…
Mar 8th, 2008
JD
I don’t know about using one for extra memory. Flash drives only have a certain number of writes before they fail, and it’s not a huge number. Constantly writing to it as RAM is probably a good way to ruin the drive very quickly.
Mar 8th, 2008
Andrew
#4 was a great idea. Thanks!
Mar 9th, 2008
JD
to everyone viewing this and giving #4 praise…. #4 will ruin your drive EXTREMELY fast.
#4 is NOT a great idea!
Mar 9th, 2008
Mike
Just a note on #4.. ReadyBoost is NOT more RAM for your PC. It is more virtual memory, which is similar but not the same.
It is an important distinction. There’s already plenty of non-computer-savvy people out there trying to upgrade their ancient 256mb computer and absolutely think dropping in a cheap 2GB flash drive will give them 2.25 gigs of memory.
Mar 10th, 2008
Pumxee
I like the Additional Memory use. That’s the most useful I found.
Mar 11th, 2008
Doug Woodall
Im having enough trouble with Vista on my lappie, I’ll not be trusting it with my USB stick.
Mar 13th, 2008
mewt
I like the idea of adding memory with the USB stick but I see negative comments on it. oh well, might as well try mojopac. Great stumble!
Mar 13th, 2008
Sean
As a graphics contractor, i tried carrying a USB drive around with a portfolio to just have available in those times that people want to see my stuff.
Trouble is - people don’t want to jack someone’s drive into their computer that they don’t know. They always prefer going to a website. It’s just as easy to put everything online and point them to your URL. If they can use your pen drive then they can open your website, and they always feel better about it.
I also prefer Puppy Linux as the thumb drive OS. It works faster.
Mar 13th, 2008
Raseel
MojoPac and eBoostr look worth a try
Mar 13th, 2008
Peter
We have a great potential number 8 for the list (PHILM) which we are developing for the B2B market in particular. It’s a website in your pocket that acts as a key to your online content. Very cool for putting all you video, PDF, PowerPoint files in one location with an easy to use custom interface. Plus when you put in the stick you get automatic updates. The new Eco-friendly evergreen USB.
Mar 14th, 2008
Kevin
Hi,
I’d like to recommend Handy CD Ripper Portable. http://handyripper.com
I installed it on my USB pen drive and use it to rip and play audio cds.
It’s cool!
Mar 15th, 2008
sven
great ideas - i will try these once i’m back in my flat
–sven techno–
http://sventamagotchi.googlepages.com/home
Mar 17th, 2008
Sl3v3n
@ HA and Demono:
Some people like a variety of music and listen to whatever they are in the mood for. I’ll often stick my iPod on shuffle through 19 days worth of music and just listen. 85 different genres and 700 artists gives you a little variety
MIA one minute, the Killers the next. Maybe even a little Pachelbel or Bach. Miles Davis anyone? Get the point? Some people apparently have more varied tastes…
Mar 17th, 2008
apel mahmud
stumbled
Mar 18th, 2008
not here
If you buy a good Single Layer Cell designed USB drive then you will greatly extend the life of it while using it as a caching device. Cheap USB drives will use Milti-Layer Cell and are far cheaper to manufacture. read this site to for more information: http://www.allmemorycards.com/.....memory.htm. Yes you can use USB to get performance increases, just remember that you will not use a USB device as RAM no matter what a company promises in ads or online; The whole concept it to use USB as a faster caching system for your system pagefile. Reading that data from a USB will be faster then reading the same sata from an HD but using the USB as RAM would be slower due to the extra overhead of the bus system and the fact that USB was not designed as an active storage media but rather a backup/transport system for files and a unified communications method for external devices such as cameras, phones and MP3 players.
Have fun trying the software everyone. I will bet anyone with less RAM (<1GB) will see more benefits then someone with say 4GB of system RAM
Mar 20th, 2008
MaccMann
On MojoPac:
Or, you could just use a Mac and do the same thing, NATIVELY without having to pay someone else $50 to code an app.
Macs have had the ability to boot from an external source (CDROM, DVD or Hard Drive) for over 10 years! And now that SCSI is not the external interface of choice for the Mac, USB or even Firewire is right on.
Just get FREE utilities, like Netboot or SuperDuper and clone your OS to an external source, or just install the OS fresh and build a new personalized image, boot the Mac, holding down the Option key and choose your boot source.
BAM!
Yeah, I have been booting Macs from external drives since about 1997. Nice try Winbloze Luzers, but it’s about 10 years too late.
Mar 20th, 2008
SR
The utilities like pdf reader, vim, and other open source tools can be stuffed inside it for portable access.
Mar 21st, 2008
dave
i just luv it
Mar 21st, 2008
McLovin
4 is a very bad idea. the average transfer rate for usb2 flash drives is ~20MB/s read and 11MB/s write. even a 2.5″ HDD hits ~70MB/s….
Mar 23rd, 2008
it2051229
NUMBER 4 wooohhhhoooooooooooo!!!!
Mar 23rd, 2008
billybobjoemomma
Not Here is right. The system will use it as a cache and caches are faster because the system knows the exact location of the information and will call it before trying to read its File System Tables just to scan the whole hard drive(s) to locate all the pieces of the file its trying to load.
For great USB friendly programs:
http://www.no-install.com
http://standalone.atspace.org
http://www.portableapps.com
http://portablefreeware.com
And for UNIX/Linux/BSD apps on your USB drive:
http://sourceforge.net/project.....up_id=9328
Mar 25th, 2008
JAB_au
WinAMP last, bah, you have not taste. Firefox on a stick, now that is handy but you didn’t mention it at all.
May 6th, 2008
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