Ultimate USB Drive

USB thumb drives have shown themselves to be a superior alternative to other portable media such as diskettes and writable optical discs. They're smaller and can hold tons of data, and most current operating systems recognize them without needing any special drivers. We've seen 1GB drives for under $100, and drives with smaller capacities start at under $20.

Most people don't realize that these drives can also carry enough applications to serve as a personal office on the road, and can even contain a complete bootable operating system to provide total security when you are computing away from home. There are plenty of reasons to carry applications or an operating system on your USB drive: You'll have your e-mail and instant messaging accounts, Internet bookmarks, log-on passwords, and even document templates instantly available on any computer you find in a hotel's computer center, a home, or an office that you might visit. You can also be certain that your settings will stay on your USB drive and won't be stored in the browser cache or anywhere else on a remote machine. Here's what we put on our ultimate USB drive; the programs are free for personal use, unless noted. Most of the apps we describe can run entirely from the USB drive without installation.

Your Internet Office on the Road

Enthralled by Firefox but frustrated that many PCs you use still don't have it installed? Or perhaps you just prefer to steer clear of the spyware potentially lurking inside Microsoft Internet Explorer, the more popular browser? Firefox leaves no clues to your browsing activities on the remote computer, something you can never be sure of when using IE. Developer John Haller has created portable versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, the Sunbird calendar application, and the NVU Web-page editor (all can be downloaded from http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla ). Portable Fire-fox has minor limitations when run from a USB drive, but the others work perfectly.

Portable Firefox 1.0.4 () renders most sites exactly as it does when installed on your hard drive, but Java applets will run only if Java (which will work only if it finds settings already specified in the registry) is installed on the host machine. You also won't be able to view PDF files if no PDF software is installed on the host, so download the fast and tiny (less than 1MB) Foxit PDF Reader 1.3 for standalone viewing of PDF files. You'll need to download PDFs instead of viewing them in the browser. ( www.foxitsoftware.com )

If you install the Firefox Bookmarks Synchronizer extension, you can upload new bookmarks to an FTP server and import them to your home machine when you return, or download your bookmarks on the road if you forgot to update them before you left. If you use Portable Firefox on a host computer that doesn't have Firefox already installed, it creates two directories on the host, but your settings, cookies, and other private files remain on the thumb drive. ( http://addons.mozilla.org )

Portable Thunderbird 1.0.2 (beta; ), based on the excellent Mozilla.org mail client, works without problems on a USB drive. You'll get the best results if you have an IMAP account that lets you leave messages on the server instead of transferring them to your drive, as you normally do with conventional POP mailboxes. Although not as high-powered as Microsoft Outlook for calendars and scheduling, Portable Sunbird 0.2 () gets the job done and may be enough for anyone whose work doesn't require carrying an Outlook-equipped laptop everywhere. Portable NVU 1.0 Preview Release ), a basic HTML editor still in early development, is also trouble-free on a USB key but doesn't compare to Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.

For FTP and Secure FTP, FileZilla 2.2.14b lets you choose between a secure mode that never stores passwords and a less-secure mode that stores passwords in an XML file on your thumb drive. FileZilla doesn't have the prettiest interface you've seen on an FTP client, but it's fast and secure, and worth considering for your desktop machine as well as for your thumb drive. ( http://filezilla.sourceforge.net )

The free Trillian Basic 3.1 instant messaging client works with AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger, but it isn't designed to be run from a portable drive. The third-party Trillian Anywhere Web site provides simple instructions for setting up Trillian on your hard drive, creating all its settings, and then transferring it to a USB drive. The result is a trouble-free universal IM client that leaves no traces on the host computer. ( www.trilliananywhere.com )

John Haller has also created USB-friendly versions of the http://OpenOffice.org office suite; you can choose between a stable 1.1.4 version and a faster and slicker 2.0 Alpha version. The 2.0 version fills 127MB, so you'll need a generous-size USB drive, but it guarantees you a full-featured productivity suite compatible with Microsoft Office wherever you plug in the drive. You may need to click through the license agreement on each new host machine, but that's a minimal inconvenience. ( http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/portable_openoffice )

All work and no play makes for a dull USB key. Fortunately you can store your favorite tunes on your thumb drive and listen to them with XMPlay, a miniature but high-powered media player. It has the tiny, overelaborate interface typical of freeware media players, but with downloadable skins that can slightly improve it. Alternatively, consider CoolPlayer, a compact open-source MP3 player that can be extended via plug-ins to handle almost any current media format. (XMPlay, www.un4seen.com/xmplay.html , ; CoolPlayer, http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net , )

Security

Every time you plug a USB key into someone else's computer, you risk catching a virus or other malware. For a scanner that checks the full range of viruses found in the wild, download AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic, which can be installed to your USB drive and run from any host computer. (It puts a few Registry entries on your hard drive, which you can remove or ignore.) One minor problem with AntiVir on a USB drive: If you haven't used the drive for a day or two, you should run the AntiVir updater as soon as you plug your drive into a new machine. But after you run the built-in updater, the updater component remains in memory, so the Safely Remove Hardware icon will tell you that you can't remove your USB drive safely. You can use the Windows Task Manager to close down the AntiVir process before removing the drive, or simply pull the drive out without further ado if you're certain that no other program on it is still running. ( www.free-av.com )

If space is at a premium, make sure your USB drive has at least a reduced antivirus program that focuses on a few high-risk attacks; McAfee's Avert Stinger is probably the best. ( http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger )

Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 isn't the most powerful spyware remover—and ideally needs to be used in combination with other programs—but you can carry it with you on a USB drive, and it's infinitely better than nothing. Install it in the normal way to your hard disk, then simply copy its folder to your USB drive. ( www.lavasoft.de )

You'll also want to save your passwords securely. The most efficient way to save Web passwords and forms is with Pass2Go ($39.95), also known as RoboForm Portable, a version of our Editor's Choice RoboForm form filler. If you browse the Web by running IE from the host computer while using a USB drive, then you can simply run Pass2Go from the USB key; the host's copy of IE will display the RoboForm toolbar and use your stored log-on information. If you use Portable Firefox, you'll also need to download the RoboForm Mozilla Adapter and follow the specific instructions on www.roboform.com/removeable.html for Portable Firefox. While running, Pass2Go writes files (but not your private settings) to a Temp folder on the host's hard drive. It cleans up after itself when you exit, leaving only a copy of the executable Pass2Go program on the host drive, and no other settings. ( www.roboform.com )

Among traditional standalone password storage programs, a good first choice is KeePass Password Safe, a high-powered open-source utility that uses AES and TwoFish encryption and is designed so that passwords won't be visible to keystroke loggers or any other snooping software. It has special storage for the use-once TAN (transaction number) passwords used for online banking. The keyboard interface is somewhat unreliable; accelerator keys such as Alt-F for the File menu or Ctrl-O for Open database sometimes don't have any effect. ( http://keepass.sourceforge.net )

To secure programs and data against prying eyes, you can use USB drives that come with encryption already on the drive or software-only solutions that can be installed on any thumb drive. Kingston Technology ( www.kingston.com ) uses a combination of hardware and software encryption on its DataTraveler Elite USB drives. Other vendors, such as Lexar ( www.lexar.com ) and Trek 2000 ( www.thumbdrive.com ), use software-only encryption that can be installed only on the same vendor's USB drives.

In either case, the drive comes with software that divides it into a normally visible region and an encrypted region. When you unlock the encrypted region with a password, the visible region disappears, and the same drive letter that the system assigned to the visible portion of the drive is assigned to the encrypted region. When you log out of the encrypted region, the visible portion regains its original drive letter, and the encrypted portion becomes invisible. Some new drives, such as Lexar's JumpDrive TouchGuard and SanDisk's upcoming Cruzer Profile line ( www.sandisk.com ), include fingerprint authentication.

The software in these combined solutions works only with specific drives sold by the same vendor. Software-only solutions that work with any USB drive include Folder Lock ($35), which offers multiple levels of encryption and a clear but graphics-heavy interface. The program creates a password-protected folder that isn't visible in Windows Explorer or any other directory listing until you run the program to unlock it. When you lock the folder and exit the program, it completely cleans up after itself. The encrypted folder is visible if you plug the drive into a Macintosh or Linux system, although the contents and filenames are still encrypted. ( www.newsoftwares.net )

Other drive-encryption programs tend to be less convenient. StorageCrypt 2.0.1 ($29.95) works only with drives that are formatted with multiple partitions, each with its own drive letter. You install the software on a partition that remains visible, and you run the software to encrypt or decrypt a second partition. It's easy to use despite the badly translated dialogs. StorageSafe ($29.95) doesn't require a partitioned drive to start with but works by completely reformatting your existing drive, wiping out any data that may be on it and creating a public area and a protected, encrypted area that you unlock by running the program and entering a password. Unfortunately, you need to install StorageSafe on any host computer from which you want to access the protected area, and the host computer may be set up so that you can't install anything. (StorageCrypt 2.0.1, www.magic2003.net , ; StorageSafe, www.modsol.com/StorageSafe , .)

Environments to Go

To protect your privacy on the Web, you may not need to have special security software. Instead, launch an emulated Windows CE or Linux system on your USB drive.

You don't need to carry a PDA to use the Windows CE operating system and its small-screen versions of IE and Windows Messenger. Just follow the instructions on Steve Makofsky's weblog to learn how to download Microsoft's free Windows CE emulator to your USB drive and use a batch file to launch the emulator and save its settings on the same drive. Make sure to read all the comments posted on the weblog to find essential modifications to the method described in the initial post.

After you run the emulator for the first time, it restarts instantly with the browser or IM client already open and ready for action if you left them open earlier. You don't get an e-mail client or Firefox's powerful browsing, but nothing else on a USB drive gives you the same instant-on convenience, and you'll need only 32MB for the whole package. No one seems to have figured out how to add other applications to the default setup. ( www.furrygoat.com/2004/12/portable_ce.html )

For even more security, you can run a miniature Linux system from your USB drive without rebooting. Metropipe's Portable Virtual Privacy Machine is a 125MB Linux environment that uses the open-source QEMU emulator software to allow the Linux system to run either in a window or full-screen on a Windows system. The Linux system is Damn Small Linux, based on the popular "live CD" Knoppix distribution, and includes Firefox, Thunderbird, and other open-source applications (see the sidebar below). All settings are stored inside the files used by the Linux system. On our 3-GHz test machines, the system was painfully slow to start, the Technology Preview release available during testing was buggy, and configuration programs that required the keyboard did not respond to the keystrokes needed for navigating them. ( www.metropipe.net/ProductsPVPM.shtml )

An Easier Future

Starting in fall 2005, you'll be able to buy many commercial software products—including the ZoneAlarm firewall—in portable versions based on the new U3 standard ( www.u3.com ), using a single launcher for all U3 programs on the drive and drivers that automatically clean up all traces of your programs when you detach your drive from the host machine. Though this will make things easier, the software will require U3-compatible USB drives and probably won't be compatible with your existing drives. But since there are already so many good apps that can run on current USB keys, there's no reason to wait until the new drives are out. Go ahead and load your thumb drive with apps for your next road trip.

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You can set up your USB drive so that it automatically runs a program when you plug it into a Microsoft Windows XP SP2 computer, and so it will display a custom icon next to its name in Windows Explorer. You can also give the drive any name you like—not just the standard 11-character drive label normally permitted by Windows. To do all this, create a text file named Autorun.inf in the drive's root directory, with contents something like this:

[autorun]

open=PortableFirefox.exe action=Start PortableFirefox

icon=PortableFirefox.exe label=Portable Internet

The open= line and action= lines are used only by the AutoPlay feature of Windows XP SP2. They specify, respectively, the action that the AutoPlay dialog will offer to perform and the text that the dialog will display to describe that action. The files you specify can be anywhere on your drive, but if they're not in the root, you need to give the full path. Be sure to omit the drive letter, because you can't predict what letter your drive will receive on a host computer. The icon= and label= lines indicate the icon or name of the drive as displayed in Windows Explorer. The icon can be a program file's built-in icon or any other icon resource such as a DLL or ICO file. The first icon in the file is used by default, but you can use other icons by following the filename with a comma and a number specifying the icon; numbering starts with 0, so use Filename.exe,2 to specify the third icon in the file.

Make Your Thumb Drive Bootable
ARTICLE DATE: 08.17.05

Your USB drive can be your emergency toolkit at home and away, and if the host machine supports booting from a USB drive, you can boot to a USB key that you've prepared in advance. USB drives can boot to MS-DOS (including the DOS that comes with Windows 95/98/Me), specially prepared versions of Linux, and the Windows preboot environment (which permits minimal file management and other troubleshooting but doesn't load the full Microsoft Windows GUI).

The job of making your USB drive bootable may be simple or frustrating, depending on the hardware in the host computer and the size of the USB drive. (Some BIOSs treat all USB drives smaller than 512MB as floppy disk drives, unless you tell the BIOS to treat the USB drive as a hard drive or CD-ROM.) Creating a bootable MS-DOS USB drive is easiest on a Windows 98 system, where you can often use third-party software like Symantec's PartitionMagic or Acronis Disk Director Suite to format a USB drive and mark its partition as active, and then use Windows 98's FORMAT /S command to make it bootable. Alternatively, you can find detailed manual instructions through Web searches, but be warned that methods that worked for some users won't work for others.

The most reliable and flexible software for making USB keys bootable is FlashBoot 1.2 (19.95 euros—about $24, www.prime-expert.com ), which can create anything from a minimal bootable DOS floppy to bootable Windows XP repair disks and even a fully customizable USB version of the popular BartPE boot CD-ROM, based on the Windows XP preboot environment ( www.nu2.nu ). If you build your BartPE disk carefully, you can load it with maintenance and repair tools. You may have to experiment with floppy and hard drive–style formatting of your drive before FlashBoot can make your drive bootable, but we had more success with this program than with most manual techniques. We were able to make all our test drives bootable, though some of our test computers could boot only some combinations of drives and software and not others. In general, the newer the motherboard, the more different combinations of software and USB hardware could be used for booting. An IBM ThinkPad T42 was able to boot from everything we plugged in.

Installing Linux on a USB key isn't a trivial task, but you can find plenty of helpful hints on the Web. For best results, download Damn Small Linux ( www.damnsmalllinux.org ), and proceed in one of two ways: Burn it to a CD, boot it from the CD, and use the right-click Tools menu to install it to a USB drive; or—working entirely within Windows—follow the instructions found at http://fuzzymunchkin.dyndns.org:8080/tdot/usbkeyfob/index.php . Using both methods, we created USB drives that booted on most, but not all, of our test systems.