All About USB Flash Drives!

USB flash drives are becoming increasingly common; they are inexpensive, lightweight and easily transportable - you may even find them being given away as a free promotional item! It is vital you do not overlook how useful these small devices are for storing any essential files. 

Below are five ways a USB flash drive can make your life easier. 

1 - Use a USB flash drive to keep essential files on call whenever you need them! 

USB flash drives are especially advantageous for those that travel for work or move from office to office as you can access your work files wherever you go. As a bonus, they hold several gigabytes of data, so it’s improbable you’ll ever run out of storage space, meaning your latest project files, precious photos, medical information, and other essential material is safe and sound in your pocket on your keychain. 

Unfortunately, many individuals have abandoned USB drives for data storage, opting instead for cloud services such as Microsoft one drive and google drive. Still, these do make for a handy backup.

2 - Use a USB flash drive to carry your favourite applications and settings with you. 

Most popular programmes offer a portable version of themselves which can be installed and run entirely off a USB flash drive. A considerable benefit to using mobile applications on USB sticks is that no personal data is left behind when the flash drive is removed. 

Some portable applications include Firefox, Openoffice, Google Drive and Google Chrome. 

3- Use a USB flash drive to troubleshoot and repair computer problems. 

Utilities for troubleshooting computer problems and running diagnostics run directly from a USB flash drive. These utilities also offer a tool to fix boot-up errors. AVG, for instance, ships a USB-optimised antivirus application that runs a virus scan on a troubled PC from the USB drive. 

Your flash drive repair kit should include utilities such as CCleaner, Appcrashview, AVG rescue CD for USB sticks and wireless net view. 

4- Use a USB flash drive to make windows run faster with ReadyBoost. 

It is possible to improve the performance of your system by using a USB drive or SD card as an additional memory cache. When connecting a compatible storage device to your computer, window ReadyBoost will automatically launch and give you the option to use the device to speed up your performance. 

Microsoft recommends setting aside one to three times the amount of memory on the computer for ReadyBoost. Therefore, if you have 1GB of ram on your computer, use 1 to 3 GB on the flash drive for ReadyBoost. 

5-  Use a USB flash drive to run a separate operating system. 

Running a separate operating system from your flash drive means that your computer’s hard drive does not need to be modified. If, for example, you are curious about Linux, you should buy a flash drive with damn small Linux embedded in the USB pen or install your favourite Linux OS from the USB drive using Pen Drive Linux.