6 USB Flash Drive Tricks

I am sure each and every one of us will have a USB device which helps in many ways. It is so easy to design your own custom flash drives that I can see everyone having them. If you have a USB device, then the most common use that you would experience is for transporting/storing data. However, with this small device you can also perform a myriad of tasks as well.

Find here some of the uses of these devices, which you would have not even thought of:

Suggested Reading: Advancements in computer technology

  • Run portable applications: You can use your USB to run portable applications like Open Office other than for storing data. This application is a complete program of office suite, which include, word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tools, drawing package and database, all of which is stored in this small portable device, and can be executed on any system that you want to perform these vital tasks. Some of the other portable applications will include Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. In Simple Words, you can use USB to run any portable applications. If you want anything more then go ahead here, http://portableapps.com/.

portable apps

  • Connect to a wireless Network: If you have a wireless network, then fear not that you will lose the network settings. With Windows XP it is possible to use as Wireless Network Setup Wizard and in Windows Vista, it is possible to use Windows Connect Now (WCN), both of which are means of saving wireless configuration to your USB drive. Using this it is possible to connect with other wireless or WCN compatible devices like a router or printer.

Suggested Reading: Home Networking- Set up a home network

  • Create a password reset disk: This is a vital component, which comes in handy when you lose the password of your user account on the Windows system, which is not on the domain. Your USB drive can act as a password reset disk to reset the password of your user account, and gain instant access to work on your computer. An USB drive is much more versatile than a password reset disk or a floppy disk.

Password reset disk

  • Manage it: If you really want to do more with your USB flash drive other than transporting data, then using the option of Microsoft USB Flash Drive manager for windows XP, is one of the best and easiest ways to manage your files. Some of the options will include copying files to and from the flash drive, backing up files, restoring entire flash drive to and from your hard disk, changing the label and one can even create an autorun.inf file to launch a drive manager.

manage

  • Password Protect-it: When you are transferring sensitive data, you might probably wanted to protect your date from the vicious eyes of hackers, at this instance the installation of Rohos Mini Drive (http://download.cnet.com/Rohos-Mini-Drive/3000-2092_4-10629845.html) will come in handy to safeguard the data. Using this tool you can create a secret partition on the drive for safeguarding the data, which is followed by encryption of data and protecting the documents which you copy using utility’s file manager.

Suggested Reading: Creating a new user account in Win XP

password protect

  • Lock Your PC: Have you seen a scene where people use an secret code impregnated card to lock and unlock the computer device, then this is a reality today that when you install Predator (http://www.montpellier-informatique.com/predator/en/index.php), you will find this little freeware utility which will allow you to turn your USB flash drive into a password key to lock and unlock your computer.

predator

Comments are always appreciated!!

That’s all for now, stay tuned with Tech Crates.

Praveen is associated with a webhosting company which has very good website hosting reviews

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6 USB Flash Drive Tricks, 9.7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings


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42 Responses to “6 USB Flash Drive Tricks”

  1. Dana

    May 28. 2011

    Thank you for your great tips collection about USB. It’s help me to know some more good tips.

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    • TechCrates

      May 28. 2011

      Good to know that ….

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  2. Amit

    May 29. 2011

    Nice tricks,Thanks

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    • TechCrates

      May 29. 2011

      You’re welcome and thanks for stopping by my blog…

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  3. Vishal

    May 30. 2011

    Nice tricks Man… I will give them a try

    Thanks

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    • TechCrates

      May 30. 2011

      You’re welcome and thanks for stopping by my blog 🙂

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  4. Thomas

    Jun 01. 2011

    Hi
    I have never really thinked about using an USB stick as a key card. That is pretty simple if you think about it. Thank you for the tips.

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    • TechCrates

      Jun 01. 2011

      You’re welcome buddy…… 🙂

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  5. TechChunks

    Jun 01. 2011

    Cool USB tricks. Thanks for sharing 🙂

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    • TechCrates

      Jun 01. 2011

      You’re welcome…

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  6. Techpakora

    Jun 02. 2011

    ummm nice sharing all tips are very helpful 🙂

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    • TechCrates

      Jun 02. 2011

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting…

      P.S: Many thanks to Praveen for writing this wonderful post 🙂

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  7. xime

    Jun 02. 2011

    Great article, very useful and explained very well. I was using portable apps from etoolsonline.com/my-rig/ and it is very helpful. Security is great because no one has your own things everything is on your usb stick and you can use it on different computers. I will try others portable application which i can found on net also.

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    • TechCrates

      Jun 02. 2011

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting… 🙂

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  8. subhash chandra

    Jun 14. 2011

    cool tips man to play with the USB 🙂

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    • TechCrates

      Jun 14. 2011

      Yeah…. Thanks to Praveen again for the guest post 🙂

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  9. Sandeep Yadav

    Jun 20. 2011

    These tips are awesome and can help to peoples for do more with USB. Some Tricks are based on Security i think its good for security.

    Hi, Admin please comment on my blog same like this please dont use small words. I hope you will do it next time.
    Thanks.

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    • TechCrates

      Jun 20. 2011

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting … BTW whenever I hit the submit comment button, I’m redirected to other page.. why its like that ?? 🙂

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  10. hifu prostate cancer

    Oct 15. 2011

    Awesome tricks. I didn’t know that we can use flash drive as password reset disk. This is a useful tip that everyone should practice. There’s always a time in your life that you’ll forget your desktop’s password and it would be best to do this rather than reformatting your desktop completely. That would really be an inconvenience.

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  11. JerinJ

    Nov 19. 2011

    Useful article.Will try this out & thanks for sharing. 🙂

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    • TechCrates

      Nov 19. 2011

      You’re welcome … and thanks for stopping by my blog

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  12. DS

    Dec 25. 2011

    Nice Tips. Keep it up. 🙂

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  13. Alex

    Mar 27. 2012

    well, is it real that we can do these thing with our tiny usb??? awesome share admin, thank you very much!

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    • TechCrates

      Mar 27. 2012

      Yep its true … Thanks for the comment !

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  14. Harriet

    Mar 27. 2012

    Thanks for the tip of password protection. I have this awful habit of leaving my USB in the computer I was working at at uni and then panicking all night that someone might be stealing my work!

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  15. JamesW

    Mar 28. 2012

    These are some really good tricks, bookmarked it.

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    • TechCrates

      Mar 29. 2012

      Thanks for the comment …

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  16. saha

    Mar 28. 2012

    Good to read this informative post. Exactly most of the people are using USB device to transform and store data. I will definitely try to follow these trick to use USB device more effectively.

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    • TechCrates

      Mar 29. 2012

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting …

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  17. Puneet

    Mar 28. 2012

    Thats really nice tricks. Time to play with USb. Nice sharing.

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    • TechCrates

      Mar 29. 2012

      Thanks for your comment …

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  18. Ashok

    Mar 28. 2012

    Thanks for such a wonderful article! It helped me a lot in improving my knowledge about USB Flash.

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  19. john

    Mar 29. 2012

    Very helpful info. Thanks for sharing.

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  20. Julie

    Mar 29. 2012

    Wow! Thanks for sharing these useful tips, I haven’t heard about the most of them, so they are very helpful for me.

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    • TechCrates

      Mar 30. 2012

      Its my pleasure Julie… Thanks for stopping by !

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  21. Jason

    Mar 31. 2012

    Fantastic tricks, i dont really use my usb flash drive much, i should really start to use it a lot more, now i have seen these tips and tricks i will use it a lot more to be honest, i am going to try each one of them to see how great they work, thanks a lot

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    • TechCrates

      Apr 01. 2012

      You’re welcome Jason…Thanks for stopping by

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  22. Vestuves

    Apr 01. 2012

    Wow.. I wasn’t aware that USB can be useful for so many things. I’ve always used it for storing backup of my data only. I will explore on this.

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  23. Michael

    Mar 20. 2014

    Nice, I usually always want to bring important applications to my Flashdisk.

    Btw do you a tutorial how to install windows from flashdisk?

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  24. Rahul

    May 26. 2014

    Cool tricks, especially last one using USB drive as a key of a computer.
    Thanks for sharing this post.

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  25. Francine

    Jul 16. 2016

    I see awesome articles you’ve got here, you
    should show your blog to much bigger audience and
    make it go viral. I read about sneaky method to bring 1000s of visitors
    to any website everyday , just search in google for; Coisin’s tips & tricks

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  26. Lisa

    Jul 02. 2018

    Hello,I read your blogs named “6 USB Flash Drive Tricks | Technology Review” daily.Your humoristic style is awesome, keep doing what you’re doing!

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