The Pen is mightier than the megabyte!

Mass storage device for PC. USB flash drives. Image via Wikipedia

As technicians we have way to many pen drives!

If you are like me, you probably have several different USB Flash drives laying around like I do.  I usually have special ones for special projects.   You’d probably have one for Virus removal and another one for fixing Hard Drives like Spinrite.   A few years ago, I would have 6 to 10 Pen drives for just those special occasions.   I’d even have one for all my saved games and other important files that I might need.

One Pen Drive to rule them all, One Pen Drive to find them,
One Pen Drive to bring them all and in the darkness bind them!

So I have found some great programs to create one massive Pen Drive so I don’t have to have so many USB Flash Drives laying around on the desk!  I figured I would go about talking about the best way to pack your USB drive with all that valuable information and have it at your finger tips in case of the some problems with the system.

  • YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator — This is what you will need to pack that USB with all your favorite ISO‘s.    The only requirement is the size of the Pendrive.   If you don’t have a big enough Pen drive then you will ultimately have to split them into small pen drives.    I have several different useful programs on my pen drive.  The only down side is that it is Windows only.   I would love them to make it for Linux or even OS X but It is still darn useful.
  • WSUS Offline Upate —  This is darn useful program.   If you ever needed to update a Windows without being online this is for you.  It will download the files and then make an ISO.   Once you have the ISO you can Yumi to put it on the Pen Drive.  Good news about this is you can keep using Yumi to replace the ISO every month and it doesn’t take much time.   Just don’t delete the files that WSUS downloads or you will have to redownload them again.  Just keep those files safe and all you will have to do is download the updates each month and then copy the new ISO to Yumi.
  • Puppy Linux — Is by far my Favorite little Linux Distro because it will allow me to save my personal settings in any computer I use and thus when I come back to the system with Puppy, I do not have to redo anything I did before.
  • Ultimate Boot CD — Is another great little ISO to install in the Pen Drive.   If your having problems with the system.   This will let you test the system in ways you probably never thought about doing.   Very useful for any Technician who is doing some kind of problem solving.
  • System rescue CD — If you ever needed to rescue the system from a variety of problems like partition problems or hard drive crashes.   This is goo for that resource.  This Distro contains many different tools for Networks, file restoration and Many more.
  • Spinrite —  The is obviously the best tool there is because it will already come as an ISO and all you will need to do is us YUMI to put it on the USB drive.   Once on the drive you have a plug and hard drive repair program for any occasion.

I pretty much gave you a baseline of ISO and programs to use to make your Ultimate Pen drive for when you might need them.  I won’t go on to much longer because I know your itching to try these programs and find even more programs to install onto your USB Flash Drive.   I will say if you search long and hard you could find some really good treasures to make it even better and worth while.   I like having only a few Pen drives than having a hand full of them. Don’t you??

Have a Good day, See you real Soon!

 

Paul Sylvester

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pctv HD Mini Stick and My thoughts!

Pctv HD Mini Stick

  • Includes mini-remote control and high-gain telescopic antenna
  • Compact size HDTV tuner for easy travel and storage
  • Instantly turn your PC into a personal digital video recorder
  • Record your favorite shows to your hard drive or direct-to-DVD
  • TV Standards – ATSC (HDTV up to 1080i, SDTV) and ClearQAM (HDTV up to 1080i, SDTV) Inputs

Price: Click Link to See the Price

Just saw this and couldn’t resist talking about it.  This would be great on the road.  If you use this on a laptop, then you would have some really good channels as you travel on the road.  No more having to watch movies on your laptop.   You can now see the current events as you travel around the US.  With the Digital change over Coming Feburary 17, 2009.  You’ll want to have a way to watch TV, this would be one way.  Right now Amazon is offering it for 112.22 but that could change so check the link out to find out how much it is.

Drive eRazer Tabula Rasas Hard Drives, No Computer Required

Need to kill the data on a hard drive you have lying around but don’t wanna bother hooking it up to a PC? Wiebetech’s pocket-sized eRazer plugs directly into lonely hard drives and genocides whatever naughtiness you have have etched into it at a rate of 35MB/s, leaving a 250GB hard drive scorched earth in under two hours.

There are two versions, both the latter of which meets DoD HDD sanitation specfications: The $99 Standard hooks up to IDE drives and performs a single pass, while the $150 pro model jacks into SATA drives and sports a multi-pass mode for the super paranoid. [Wiebetech via Crave]

Nice to have for the computer repair on the go!! 😉 You can always plug and play!! Not Sure how securely it formats the HD! 😉

Western Digital Ships 320GB 2.5-Inch Drives for Laptops

WD_Scorpio_320GB.jpg
It’s official: you can now buy a 320GB drive from WD for your laptop, and for just $200. The WD Scorpio SATA drive spins at 5400rpm and has a 8MB cache. The press release says it’s “extraordinarily quiet while running at cool operating temperatures.” I hope that doesn’t mean it’s extremely loud while running at super high temperatures. The important thing is, this timing coincides with the arrival of Mac’s Time Machine and the Windows Home Server, two easy ways to offload your laptop’s entire contents, swap out the internal drive, then restore your old image without a lot of tinkering. I know some of you like tinkering, but this is the future. [WD]

Nice now we can have even more space on the Laptop!!