What You Said: What’s In Your Flash Drive Toolkit

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Flash drives are such handy devices when you’re trouble shooting computers. You can run operating systems off them, stash portable apps on them, transfer data between machines, backup old data before system instability wipes it, and more. The simple flash drive has opened up a world of trouble shooting tips and tricks
that simply weren’t imaginable to geeks of generations past. Read on to see what your fellow readers have stashed in their flash drive toolkits.

Portable Applications and Installers

The most popular use for portable toolkits was simply stashing useful applications that could be accessed from within the host OS.
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Almost every read carried a portable web browser, usually Firefox or Chrome. Beyond that there was a spread of portable applications and installation files. Most of you kept two sets of apps: one set to be run from the drive and one set to install and run on the host OS (allowing you to leave behind a copy of the helpful application after you finished fixing the computer you were repairing).
Among the portable applications: SUPERAntiSpyware Portable Scanner, Trend Micro’s HijackThis, CCleaner, Revo Uninstaller, Recuva, and SIW. Some portable applications have no official portable version, such Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware, and in that case readers just carried the installation file and updated the application once installed on the host machine.
The listings between flash drives varied quite a bit based on the size of the flash drive the reader had available and the level of trouble they routinely had to deal with. Check out the full list of comments for the full run down.

Operating Systems

 

Nearly a third of you (29%) carry a full out portable operating system with you. The most popular portable operating system by far was Ubuntu, but readers also carried other versions of Linux (such as Mint and Puppy) as well as other operating systems (such as Windows PE).
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Around 10% of you also kept installation files for Windows 7, XP, and Linux on your drives for those times you needed to do a full wipe.

I have a custom boot USB flashdrive. I use Xboot, on it is AVG, Blackbuntu, BackTrack, Clonezilla, Dariks Boot & Nuke, DiskCopy, ERD, F-Secure, Ghost, GnackTrack, GParted, HDClone, Knoppix, MemTest 86+ SpinRite, SystemrescueCD, UBCD 4 Win, Ubuntu, Hirens and XBMC Live CD. I know a little over kill.

Sounds about right to us, after all it’s not like you have to carry 22 flash drives to accommodate all that—you’ll have a flash drive in your pocket whether it’s loaded with goodies or not.

Clever Tricks

Along with listing the types of operating systems and software you had stashed on your flash drive, many of you offered additional tips.
Learn how to build your own LEGO USB stick here.