Make Your USB Device Into a Powerhouse

Once upon a time people used to use the floppy disk storage for transfaring and storing  data and then CD and DVD took the market and made it so easy to store any data like movies songs files software or any electronic data. But everything became so easy and more comfortable when USB pen drives were released. Now you can't find floppy around you. Even USB pen drives are also very useful alternative of CD and DVD.

But USB pen drives can be used in more ways and honestly you can turn your USB pen drive into a powerhouse. Lets see how?

• You can use it as a Bootable Device

Using a CD/DVD to install an operating system is out of fashion, apart from being less convenient. Use your pen drive to create a bootable version of an OS you are likely to use each day. Heck, you could also use it to boot multiple operating systems.

• You can use it to create a rescue drive

Last but by no means the least is an option to make your pen drive the ultimate saviour. Most of the anti-virus and anti-spyware tools like AVG and BitDefender offer a way to create rescue CDs or drives for saving a PC that's non-functional and infected with malware. You may also consider using an all-in-one recovery tool like Ultimate Boot CD.

• Use it to run Dropbox or Google Drive on other computers

You start working on someone else's, or may be a public computer and you realise that all your important files are on Dropbox (or Google Drive). And you've always hated their web versions. What do you do now? How about a thumb drive running the portable version of those tools? Dropbox portable should be available in the PortableApps suite or you could set it up separately. Google Drive portable can be used via SyncDocs.

• You can use it to Install a Full-Featured apps Suite

Using a full-featured apps suite is one of the most common ways to get the most out of your USB pen drive. These suite of tools can help you run just about any software right from that small piece of hardware. They are basically a collection of portable versions of popular tools, organised in an impressive manner. The most popular among these is PortableApps. Another good one is WinPenPack.

• It can be used to store data safely

Got a lot of pen drives lying around? Why not use some of them as an encrypted storage of confidential data. Most of the popular encryption tools, like TrueCrypt, offer a way to encrypt an external drive. If you want to store and use passwords from it, powerful password managers like LastPass and KeePass offer portable versions to help you carry them around.

• Use Windows To Go

Not many know that the Enterprise version of Windows 8 can be run completely off a USB pen drive. Of course the drive should be 32 GB or larger but then those aren't hard to come by these days. Here's a guide on how to set it up. This isn't useful to the everyday Windows user but I am sure many business owners would find it interesting and might just consider handing over their employees such Windows To Go enabled drives so that they could work in a familiar environment from any computer.

Looks like some secretes of the USB device have been revealed in-front of you. Well have fun with your USB device.