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What's On Your Thumbdrive?
Broue Master asks: "Nowadays, we need to support not only people at the office, but friends, family, friends of the family, family of the friends... you name it! They all run Windows to a degree and there are many tools to help you when assisting. Personally, I have a thumb-drive with removable memory cards. One of them has a small bootable Linux, the other one is filled with ready to use Windows utilities (CPU-Z, Ultra-Edit32), DOS utilities I've been collecting over the years, and Unix-style utilities (ps.exe, kill.exe, and others) ported to Windows, without the need for a layer like Cygwin. I also have a copy of the install files for AVG, Spybot, Sygate and the likes. But, even though I think I have many great tools, I'm sure I do not know about a lot of great others to help diagnose and solve problem. So I ask you, what's on your thumb-drive?"
For me, the key is to load "portable" versions of apps instead of "installable" versions. The point is not only to eliminate the need to install, but more importantly, not to leave traces of your apps behind. It's security and a courtesy. Two excellent sources are:
PortableApps.com
PortableFreeware.com
-Jim Barr
http://jimstips.com/
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
My girlfriend bought me a laptop hard drive in an enclosure. Its 100 GB with a 5400 RPM disc, and supports USB 2.0. I literally store everything on it, from schoolwork to movies to backups of video games. I take it everywhere with me just incase I find some software (say on my school's network) that I'd really like to take home. Or if I need to access my schedule or project documents, or maybe my voice communication client.
So, technically its not a thumbdrive, but it fits in my pocket.
EVERYTHING.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
"So I ask you, what's on your thumb-drive?"
Fingerprints.
--
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment...that says the same thing you're going to post, and you get a redundent. HA! HA!"
Could do a long post... but easier just to point to this /. post that was already up with MANY MANY good links.
There are a myriad of great tools out there, but personally I have a copy of almost everything from Sysinternals on my thumbdrive. Top of the list are Process Explorer a (overclocked, suped-up, uber, and simply amazing) version of TaskManager. It shows everything you've ever wanted to know about a process but didn't know you could know. In addition, FileMon and RegMon are very helpful for troubleshooting permission problems, and the PSTools kit (psexec, pskill, etc) are also great. They also have a free read-only version of NTFSDOS (and even an NTFS filesystem driver for 95/98. The TCP/IP tools are also very good to have on hand. Best part is of course that they are free, and many have source available.
If you do any Windows troubleshooting, this website is a must-have. No joke.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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My Capital One card.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Some of this is a bit redundant, but it is all only 19Mb using UPX.
1by1 (play MP3s), AriskKey (recover passwords), AutoRuns (enumerate startup tasks), BurnCDCC (burn ISO images), CD (basic CD player), CDex (rip CDs + convert MP3/WAV), Copier (quick scan + print), CWShredder (clean spyware), DComBob (tame DCOM), Discover (force windows onscreen), DupeLocater (find and clean), FileRecovery PC Inspector (undelete), Folder2ISO (make ISO images), FoxitReader (read PDFs), GUIPDFTK (split/join PDFs), HijackThis (find spyware), HJSplit (split/join files), Identify_Boards (identify hardware), IPAgent (show IP), KatMouse installer (due to MS drivers), LCISOCreator (make ISO image from CD), Leaktest (test firewall), Microsoft keygen (people lose things), MultiRes (change res + force refresh), Multi Timer (stopwatch), NoteTab Light (text editor), NTest (test monitor setup), OnTop (pin windows to foreground), Process Explorer (task manager), ProduKey (recover passwords), Registry Commander (virus cleanup), ResHacker (examine executables), Rootkit Revealer (just in case), ShootTheMessenger (turn service off), Shred by AnalogX (simple filer shredder), TedNPad (unicode text editor), TFT (dead pixel locator), UNPnP (tame SSDP), UPX (compress executables), UnitConverter (what it says), utorrent (basic torrent app), VCdControlTool (mount ISO images), Windows 98 generic USB flash driver, WinImp (archive to ZIP, de-archives more), WinIPs (set hardware IPs), Wizmo (create force kill shortcuts), WNTIPCFG (show IP config), WS_FTP95 (basic FTP client), XnView (image browser and effects), XPDite (minor XP-SP1 fix), YACalc (evaluate expressions), XVI32 (hex editor)
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
An Electronic Survival Kit. If there's one thing Katrina taught me, it's that losing your entire life would completely suck. Why not take a few minutes now so that you can get back to normal ASAP?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Funny, I also carry a thumb-drive with a removable memory card slot. It's this generic one floating around online: http://www.supermediastore.com/supermedia-handy-4i n1--usb-20-flash-memory-card-reader-yellow.html
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I think they're a great idea, because I can move with the SD card market as flash memory becomes denser and denser. Speed hasn't been a problem, either. The thumbdrives support USB 2.0 and my SD card seems to be capable of a very decent data transfer rate.
I have a collection of Windows tools on the drive. Not Linux tools, because I can usually accomplish whatever it is I'm doing in the Linux environments I encounter day to day.
Network Tools:
* Raw TCP/IP transfer -> netcat ( http://www.vulnwatch.org/netcat/ )
* SSH/Telnet -> putty ( http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty
* Port Scanner -> SuperScan4 ( http://www.foundstone.com/resources/proddesc/supe
* Classic Port Scanner -> nmap ( http://insecure.org/nmap/download.html )
* Packet Capture and Analysis -> WireShark setup ( http://www.wireshark.org/download.html )
Editors:
* General -> vim 7.0 ( http://www.vim.org/download.php )
* Hex Editor -> xvi32 ( http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xv
Development:
* Tiny C Compiler ( http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/tcc/ )
* nasm ( http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou
Misc:
* Lightweight Windows md5sum -> md5summer ( http://www.md5summer.org/download.html )
* Process Explorer ( http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExpl
* MP3 Encoding -> RazorLame with lame ( http://www.dors.de/razorlame/download.php )
* Terminal Emulator -> TeraTerm Pro ( http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.
The folder is 26.7MB.
you may want to switch to portaputty, it keeps stuff out of the registry, and in a neat little folder, same directory as the exe
sent from my slashdot browser.
Obviously it was a joke... a thumbdrive has nowhere near the storage capacity necessary for the average /.er's porn collection.
I foresee interesting problems in your future.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.