Practicing the Black Art (09/12)
Neat Things You Can do with a
Flash Drive
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@comcast.net
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
By now you’re probably tired of reading about
how much better Windows 7 is than Vista. Me
too, so let’s spend some time examining some of the things you can do
with a flash drive other than mere data storage. A USB flash drive
consists of a flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB
(Universal Serial Bus) interface. USB flash drives are easily removable,
and much smaller than a floppy disk. They are rewritable, and usually
weigh less than an ounce. There is a wide range of storage capacities
with the most common being from 2 GB to 32 GB. Higher capacities up to
256 GB tend to be pricey.
One of the most useful things you can do with a flash
drive is to run portable applications. Open Office, for example, is a
free suite of programs that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, data
manager, presentation tool, and drawing package. You can store the suite
as a portable application, and run it on any computer that supports
Windows. Firefox and Thunderbird are also available as mobile
applications.
Having office applications, email, and an internet
browser all pooled in a portable drive you can carry on a key chain is a
powerful combination. If you want more go to
www.portableapps.com for an
open source platform that works with iPods and portable hard drives in
addition to flash drives. The platform is not only free, but it’s a full
function site. You are not limited to a trial period or a limited
function subset. There is no sign in requirement, and no necessity to
provide even an email address. Go for it.
Everyone wants a faster system. With either Windows
Vista or Windows 7, the built-in ReadyBoost feature can speed up your
computer with a USB flash drive. ReadyBoost takes the storage space on a
USB flash drive and converts it into an additional memory cache that
supplements the main memory cache on your primary disk drive. It can do
this because flash memory is faster than regular disk drives. It’s
faster because it has no moving parts, and you can get a noticeable
improvement in response time. Implementing ReadyBoost is simplicity
itself. Insert the USB flash drive into the USB slot on your computer
and follow the configuration prompts.
If you work or live in an environment where other
folks have physical access to your computer you can use your flash drive
to lock everyone else out of your PC. There is no built-in utility like
ReadyBoost for this, but you can download a free tool called Predator
from www.brothersoft.com that provides this function. Predator uses a
standard USB flash drive as an access control device. After performing a
short installation and configuration process, your flash disk becomes a
key that will lock and unlock your PC. When you leave your PC remove the
USB flash drive. This causes the screen to go blank while disabling the
mouse and keyboard. When you ready to resume, put the flash drive back,
and everything returns to normal. Move over, Mr. Bond, Predator is here.
All the preceding capabilities are very convenient,
but how would you like to carry around a portable operating system? If
you are willing to expend a little time and energy you can configure a
USB flash drive to be a bootable Windows 7 drive. You will need a flash
drive with a capacity of al least 8 gigabytes, and of course a Windows 7
installation disk. Start out by inserting your flash drive into its USB
socket and inserting the Windows 7 installation disk in the optical
drive. Please make a note of the drive letters. This is essential for
successful installation.
Preparing the flash drive is the next step. Click on
the Start orb and type: Diskpart
Pressing Enter opens a command window. (After typing
a command at the command prompt always press Enter to execute the
command.) At the prompt type: List Disk
You will see a list of all your hard drives,
partitions, optical drives, card reader drives, and flash drives.
Identify the optical drive that contains the Windows 7 installation disk
and the flash drive you’re working with. For this example we’ll assume
the flash drive is disk #4, also designated as G and the optical drive
is disk #2, also designated as D.
At the command prompt type: Select Disk 4
Run the following commands:
This series of commands erased extraneous material
from the flash drive, created an active primary partition, and formatted
it with the FAT32 file system. The next step is to copy the Windows 7
installation files to the flash drive.
At the command prompt type: Xcopy D:*.* /S/E/F G
In this example D is the drive housing the Windows 7
installation disk and G is the USB flash drive. The command copies the
installation files to the flash drive, and when it finishes you have a
bootable Windows 7 flash drive. The last thing you need to do to make
this work is go into the BIOS and make the first bootable device the
flash drive.
Carrying a flash drive around is obviously far more convenient than
carrying a DVD, and has the additional advantage of being faster than a
DVD. This procedure also works for Windows Vista, but why bother when
Windows 7 is here?
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Copyright 2009. This article is from the December 2009 issue of the
Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota
Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL
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