I’ve got a 2G USB Flash Drive and I’ve been trying to find the most useful ways for me to use it. Here are some things I’ve discovered on my journey.
Safely Remove Hardware
Clicking on the tray icon to safely remove the USB drive tells you that the drive is still in use. After closing all the visible applications, the issue continues. After using the task manager to stop all user specific processes, the issue continues. Scanning the web only gave me multiple causes and possible workarounds. My current approach:
- Close applications that I know are using the USB drive
- Attempt to use the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the system tray
- If step 2 fails, then close applications that might be using USB drive and repeat step 2
- As my final option, I use the “Eject” command within explorer.exe
Encryption
I’m currently using TrueCrypt to encode sensitive data I don’t want falling into the wrong hands. It does require admin privileges on the machine. However, since that data is fairly sensitive, then it is unlikely I will try to use it on a machine I don’t control.
I also use KeePass to store passwords.
Version Control
Here I use Subversion. I keep a repository on my flash drive and access it with the URL “file:///G:/svn”. I keep the subversion executables on my USB drive so that I have access via the command line, but I normally use the Subclipse plug-in within Eclipse.
Revert to Console
I setup special .BAT files to create console windows that have the correct PATH and environment settings for the console applications stored on my USB drive. I use the TITLE command to give the window a descriptive name.
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3 Comments
The best thing you can do is put Linux on it and have your own portable, bootable OS!
http://featherlinux.berlios.de/usb-instructions.htm
I had Damn Small Linux for a while, but I didn’t use it that much. However, I’m still interested in a version that could be used as a rescue system. It would be handy when I get asked to troubleshoot systems for friends and relatives.
In grad school I used the Windows command line more often, and created .BAT files for different applications (MySQL and different Java classpaths) like this; but I differentiated between them based on background color though, not TITLE.
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