Ever since I bought my first USB drive back in 1999 (I’m still waiting for my Eagle, by the way!), I knew it was going to change how I think about and work with computers. All of my important information and applications are now kept encrypted on a 1 GB USB drive and I have been doing this for a number of years.As time goes on, more developers are writing applications that will work from USB drives. This means that the applications do not write to the Windows registry nor do they leave any files on the computer. This makes the concept of a portable office that resides on your USB drive more feasible.
The purpose of this article is to show you how I have my USB drive configured and to chronicle the evolution of my drive as time goes on.
USB Drive Philosophy
My USB drive philosophy is simply this: Do no harm while protecting yourself.
Do No Harm
Any application that resides on my drive should not modify (harm) the host system that it is running on. This includes creating, changing, or deleting files and registry settings. There are only two situations where this rule does not apply:
- The purpose of the application is to modify system settings and it is being used by the user to improve the systems performance. The application should not make any modifications to the system that the user is not aware of.
- The application saves information that it needs which is specific to that machine. For example, if you had an application that checked to see if files have been changed on a system, it would be acceptable for this application to store the information for that system on that system as the data would be useless on any other system. It would not be acceptable for that same application to store a list of systems that it has profiles on that system. That data should be stored with the application on the USB drive.
Protect Yourself
Another important aspect of my USB drive philosophy is that the data on the USB drive needs to be secure (protected). This means that the data needs to be both encrypted and backed up on a regular basis. These are two crucial aspects of working from a USB drive that most people forget. If your USB drive dies, gets lost, or is stolen, you could find yourself in a very bad place.
What About File Size?
Some people may be surprised to see that I do not include keeping file sizes small as a part of my philosophy. This is actually an aspect of my philosophy that has changed recently. My first 16 MB USB drive cost be about $110. As of the writing of this article, I was able to find a 4 GB drive for that same price. This is 256 times the size of my first USB drive and over 200 times the size of my first hard drive. As it stands, my 1 GB USB drive has almost 400 MB of free disk space and I keep almost my entire life on it as you will soon see. For all the extra effort that needs to go into shrinking applications and deleting unnecessary files, I would rather just buy a bigger USB drive.
Now, with all that being said, if you would like to shrink your applications, there is an excellent program called UPX that can compress most most executables and DLLs. But, be warned that the compressed applications may not work so you should always have copies available.
UPX is a command line utility. If you would like a pretty front end for it, you can also download UPX GUI which will make UPX easier to work with.
To Be Continued…
In the next part of this series, I will be talking about how I have my USB drive setup to work with this philosophy. See you then.
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March 28th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Windows Backup With Rsync and FreeNAS Windows Home Server Screenshot Tour Windows Update Without Windows Update Wish List Zen and the Art of the USB Drive Series Limitations, Challenges, and Resources My Philosophy of the USB Drive Setup and Configuration of My USB Drive USB Drive Applications Part 1 USB Drive Applications Part 2