My local Micro Center recently had a good deal going on 1GB USB drives. Or at least, $15.99 seemed like a good deal to me, so on a whim I stopped in last week and picked one up.
Not that I really needed one, mind you. I have my trusty little 256MB that easily holds my Toolkit and I also have a 60GB drive in a little 2.5″ drive enclosure that handles pretty much anything else that pops up. Let’s not forget my little 1GB mp3 player either.
Now here I sit, trying to determine what to do with this thing that would not only be useful, but interesting.
- Mojopac still intrigues me. However, it still won’t run on some of my machines due to the non-standard windows directory locations. Which means I’ve yet to actually see it in action. That being said, I’m not exactly sure what I’d use it for.
- Moka5 is interesting, in a “vmware player for USB” sort of way. 1GB doesn’t go real far when building complete OS images.
- Portable Apps seems like the logical direction to head, but for one issue: I just can’t see that I have a need to carry around an extra install of Firefox or OpenOffice around with me. Adding Pstart to the mix kinda looks like fun if I ever figure out what I need to be portable. A couple years ago, this would’ve been a no-brainer, but these days there’s so much that I can just do via a web browser.
- Carry documents around? Well, I have router based VPN to my work machines and I have box.net for most anything else. Heck, I also have a web host account that has at least 2GB that I’m not even touching. In other words, I have a variety of options for moving around documents.
- That being said, maybe this would be an interesting way to lug my TrueCrypt stuff around?
Am I missing any great or interesting uses for a 1GB USB drive? Am I dismissing anything mentioned above too hastily?
What would you find interesting to do with a 1 GB drive?
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November 5th, 2006 
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I use mine for back-ups. I have one attached permanently to the back of my computer that synctoy that you recommended syncs to nightly.
I have another that I carry stuff I can’t do without with me.
It’s also got work stuff I might need at the drop of a hat so that I appear prepared at all times. Sometimes dial-up is a pain in the butt, esp. with all the ajax out there that I’m addicted to so the usb drive is handy.
I’ve got the progs I want on it for when I’m using a slave terminal (aka cash register with interweb access) in one of my stores. I can run my virtual machine without installing anything so the office geeks can’t tell what I’m doing.
If I’m at friends or family I can use my portable progs and have my own environment without using theirs or leaving my footprints on their computer.
u can always buy more and resell them for a profit.they usually cost atleast $50.00 around here. i was curious if anyone might have a comment on this. i have about a 5 year old vaio laptop and was wondering if i could install an operating system on a 5 gig or larger compact flashcard and run it on a pcmcia adapter.i was thinking if i could do something similar to that with a larger flash card and go to a 7200rpm hard drive it could make more space and speed things up some.was just a thought on my part.
[...] It wasn’t all that long ago I was pondering what to do with my shiny new USB key. Today I stumbled over a fun little application by the name of Torpark. Do I need this? Heck no! But what fun it is to mess around with — and at least I feel like I’m doing something useful with this key… [...]
I like using my ‘extra’ sticks for WOS (Website On Stick). Works very well, emulates a localhost WAMP and allows me to cram a bunch of examples/designs on to a stick and bring them to a client or even show off to the grand parents who don’t have broadband… Sometimes I’ll throw it in my laptop to test sites or do some code/design when I don’t have access to my desktop.
Thanks for all the ideas, guys. I spent a few hours last night setting some stuff up. Think it’s time for an update to this post.
Sam’s pretty close to the direction I went.
[...] In a comment, Sam mentioned “website on a stick.” I might look at doing something like that for the future. Still pondering if I need that level of utility, but I definitely have the space — over 860MB left to burn. [...]