The use of USB hard drives, ThumbDrives, or UsbKeychainDrives as they are often called, has grown tremendously. This page attempts to gather some uses for ThumbDrives.
One of the major benefits of a ThumbDrive is portability - particularly between two different computers.
Some ways ThumbDrives are used by programmers:
- As a PersonalWiki - Swiki (http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki), or EddiesWiki
- VersionControl - as a sourcecode repository, so LoneDeveloperProjectManagement can be synchronized between work and home
- Easy backup
- SneakerNet - holds much more than a floppy
- All Your Personal Settings On a Keychain (especially interesting together with a CD-only distribution like Knoppix - you can boot Linux with your own personal settings on a foreign computer without having to install anything on their disk)
- Pgp Keys On a Keychain
- Copy Cya Type Docs To Your Keychain to protect them from being deleted if you live in that kind of corporate environment
- Portable music archive.
- Portable digital photo album. Include some kind of slideshow software (versions for OS X and Windows at least) and you'll have new dads and grandparents knocking your door down to buy one.
- Transport of antiviral software, patches, and worm cleanup tools around a department. However, this can backfire badly unless you use a thumb drive with a "write protect switch".
- Stealing ICE from CIA (bad joke, from a movie that was a bad joke) see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292506/ Hackerish tells me that is a use, maybe not legal, but definitely a use. On the other hand, the NOC list fits onto a floppy. But of no good if you have a JammingPhone?!
booting
- Now, if they were bootable, that would be a handy rescue gadget!
Some very recent BIOSes allow booting from a USB drive.
KnoppixLinux or similar would make it a complete solution.
- Any commonly available laptop have that? And is it possible / desirable to create data files on the same ThumbDrive? -- dl Sep04
Yes, you can put the boot file and data files on the same thumb drive. I've seen one person partition his thumb drive into a "programs" partition and a "data" partition.
If anyone has booted off a thumb drive -- tell us: How long did it take? One would hope that it would be practically "instant-on" compared to booting off floppies.
- The ONLY backup for anyone like me who bought their computer years ago.
I can play DVDs but can't burn CDs. Remember when 1.44MB was a lot of space?
Nowadays, even small media files are too big for floppies and I'd be lost without a thumbdrive.
Thumb Drive Uses