Amazing Stuffs to do with your Pendrive

The introduction of the thumb drive by IBM and Trek back in 2000 was revolutionary. It saw the beginning of the first viable replacement of the floppy disks that had been used for conventional data storage since the mid-70s. With the fallout of the floppies between 2002 and 2009, thumb drives (later pen drives, pocket drives, flash drives and USB drives) made their way into being the most convenient method of storing data that can be carried around in your pocket.

The physical size and capacity of current flash drives in the market open avenues to more creative programming, helping people get more portable. Here are some innovative uses of a pen drive:

Predator

Everyone likes their privacy, and the people at Predator know it. Predator is a software created to lock your PC using your pen drive as a key. Most people use direct login.

The installer program will automatically start Predator. 

1. If not, you can launch it manually via the Start Menu>All Programs>Predator item or via the Predator icon on the Desktop.
2.  A dialog box will ask you to enter a password and to prepare a USB flash drive.
3.  Insert your USB drive and click OK to continue.
4.  Keep in mind that the current contents of your flash drive will be unchanged by this operation. Then you see the Preferences window. 
5. Type the password of your choice in the “New Password” field. You will use it to unlock your session if you lose your USB key. You must enter at least six characters, letters, figures or signs. The password is case-sensitive. Also, avoid typing characters that require the AltGr key because this key is disabled in the Password Dialog box later. 
6. Check that the drive letter displayed under USB key drive actually matches your flash drive or choose the correct letter from the dropdown list.
7.  Click the Create key button and finally, click Ok.

ClamWin Portable Antivirus

Eradicating Viruses in any system is usually quite a task. Taking your own data storage devices to alien PCs is always a possible viral hazard. ClamWin reduces chance of your storage devices and hardware contracting viruses from other systems. A free Antivirus for Windows it has a track record for having a high detection rate of viruses and spyware. The Clam Antivirus Team updates its database regularly to include a new virus or variants of old viruses almost regularly.

To install the Antivirus on a pen drive, download the setup from: http://portableapps.com/apps/security/clamwin_portable

Once downloaded, install it in the location of your pendrive. After installation, go to H:/ClamWinPortable/ and run ClamWinPortable.exe (Replace H:/ with the name of the pendrive you’ve installed clamwin on).
Clamwin would prompt you to update your databases. Once updated, you’re set.

VLC Portable

In a scenario when using a PC where the system is uncared for (other offices, cyber cafes and in college), that a program as commonly available as VLC hasn’t been installed on it. VLC Portable is a program used to fix this inconvenience. It is a mobile version of the VideoLAN Player which can be installed on your pen drive and carried around, complete with codecs and a multilingual language pack.
To Install: Download the portable package from the VLC Portable page at http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/vlc_portable  and begin installation. 

A PortableVLC directory will be created and all the necessary files installed.