What's on Your USB Pen Drive?

gmhowell asks: "With the popularity of USB pen drives, I've thought it time to join the crowd and get one. But I'm curious as to what is so important that you should always have a copy. Clearly PuTTY or your favorite SSH client is important. Perhaps with some keys. But what else? A copy of your browser cookies? MP3s? Pictures? What other software is smart enough to run from a portable medium without need for an installation? (Yup, MAME and z26 seem like likely candidates)."

Comments

school work

[Blob Pet]

My entire UNIX account from school, including all my read mail and web pages, is backed up on my USB drive. I store anything I think I might need to work on just in case I don't have internet access.

unxutils!

[\\]

i used to have a cygwin install on my keychain, but it requires some registry crap in windows to work properly.

rather than clutter up the registry of every windows computer i'll ever use (joke here), i use unxutils, which has a great command line interface. along with cli gpg and my ssh keys, my usb keychain is of great use to me when i'm away from my powerbook.

quicken backup, etc...

[Dukebytes]

I backup quicken on it because it is a LOT quicker than floppy. And of course its great for transfer of personal files, email, avi, mp3 etc... between work/home/friends.

I love it - I bought a 128MB and it is just about perfect. I carry it around like a pocket knife :)

I got my dad to buy one to backup his files while hes on the road. And I just had to have one after setting his up for him and such. If you DONT have one - go get one, really...

Duke

Re:The obvious answer...

[soleblaze]

afaik, usb thumbdrives (or whatever they're called) act as usb drives, and in most modern bios you can select 'boot from usb drive'

Puppy linux for starters

[monopole]

Puppy linux fits in 48MB w/ a X windows interface and office software
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/
Mesh-AP fits in 32MB and incorporates an ad-hoc WiFi mesh and an Opera browser
http://www.locustworld.com/
Trinux fits in a floppy with heavy duty security functions
http://www.trinux.org/

What's in Your Wallet, er Drive

[lww]

So, here's what my pendrive looks like after 10 months of use:

/docs - all my personal docs (bookmarks, resume, will, keyfiles, etc)

/proj - source checkouts for personal projects under active development. Dedicated Eclipse workbench and tailored shortcut for launching eclipse. This lets me have one ide for java, python, documentation, websites, xml/xsl, etc.

/xfer - file transfer/holding area for moving stuff between locations/systems

/linux - aliases, scripts, must have utils

/win32 - gvim, dedicated profiles for thunderbird and firebird. Installs (but not installed) for putty, winzip, firebird (instant browser!)

Note, Putty is registry dependent, and the workaround for using it on a pen drive is too painful for everyday use. I love Putty, but it doesn't live on my pen drive. I wish it would :(

Having firebird and thunderbird profiles on the pen drive means that I can have firebird/tbird installs live on work/home/laptop machines but always keep my data off the boxes and in my hands. I keep my bookmarks in my /docs directory in case I'm on a foreign box.

Trillian

[OneBarG]

Trillian can run from portable media (even a CD if you're not interested in changing settings). Gotta modify some ini's to make the paths relative, but it works pretty well.

Somebody even set up a website with step-by-step instructions

Trillian Anywhere