Techin3D

I"ll summarize some interesting uses of a spare usb drive that some of you maynot know about.

Pure Technical Uses Of Usb Flash Drive Cool and Silly Uses Of Usb Flash Drive

Five Pure Technical Uses Of Usb Flash Drive You May Not know

1. Lock & Unlock Your Computer

You can lock and unlock your computer with a physical device, pretty much like they do in the movies. Use the free PREDATOR application, which turns a USB flash drive into an access control device – a key for your computer. When you leave your PC, unplug the USB stick and your computer will be locked. When you return, plug it back in and your computer will be unlocked. It’s like using the Lock function in Windows, but you don’t have to type your password when you return.
When you unplug your USB flash drive, your open windows will minimize and your screen will go dark – plug it back in and your screen will turn back on.

2. Quickly Connect To Wireless Networks

Windows includes a feature that can save your current wireless network’s name, password, and other information to a USB stick. You can then use the USB stick to quickly connect to your Wi-Fi network on other computers without typing the password over and over again. In fact, you can even use this USB stick to quickly connect an Xbox 360 to your Wi-Fi network – just select the Windows Connect Now option while setting up a wireless network on your Xbox.

To save your Wi-Fi settings to a USB flash drive >> click the wireless icon in your system tray >> right-click your current wireless network >> select Properties on the Connection tab >> click the Copy this network profile to a USB flash drivelink.

Click the Next button and Windows will copy the settings for the configured network to your USB stick. Connect the USB stick to another computer, and then double-click the setupSNK.exe file on it to install your network profile on the computer.

3. Increase Performance With ReadyBoost

if you have a slow hard disk drive in your computer, ReadyBoost can help speed things up. When you enable ReadyBoost for a drive, it acts as a hard drive cache, caching frequently used files. If it’s faster to read from the USB stick instead of your hard drive, Windows will read files from the cache on your flash drive instead. You won’t see much of a performance boost if you have a 7200+ RPM drive – if you have a solid-state drive, Windows won’t let you use ReadyBoost because the cache will be slower than your SSD.

To enable ReadyBoost, right-click a USB stick in Windows Explorer, select Properties, and use the options on the ReadyBoost tab. Windows will only let you enable ReadyBoost if your USB stick is fast enough, so you might see these options grayed out for some devices. ReadyBoost also requires a flash drive with at least 256 MB of free space.

Apart from uses like file sharing, data storage, remote access, password protector, the one feature which has come to popular use is ReadyBoost .It's a feature enabled in Windows 7 computers. It enables the users to use the memory in the USB flash drive to speed up your computer. In a way, it is used as RAM. Theoretically, upto 256 GB of RAM can be enabled to your computer using this feature.

A detailed explaination here

4. Install A Portable Web Server

If you’re a web developer, you can install Server2Go on your flash drive and turn it into a portable web server. Server2Go includes a complete WAMPP server stack – that’s Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl. You can plug the Flash drive into any Windows computer and quickly launch your web server – no installation required. Having a complete web server package in your pocket can be ideal for demonstrations at meetings and many other purposes – you’re only limited by your imagination. Server2Go is a completely free download.

5. Portable apps

You can also install a wide variety of portable applications which you can run off your USB stick without installing them. Check out our list of the best portable apps to get started!

Cool and Silly Uses Of Usb Flash Drive

6.Bury it in a wall with its end sticking out.

This is a USB "Dead Drop" - Anonymous P2P file sharing network.

But WHY?

As you can see its not very convenient. You could end up with scratches on your laptop, a broken USB port, broken USB drive or all three. More importantly, why would you be bothered about checking it out or leaving something on it? The answer to that is - because it's fun (for some people at least). It isn't solving a problem, it isn't meant to be practical or useful.

Across New York, there are USB drives embedded in walls, buildings and curbs. The idea is to create an anonymous, offline file-sharing network in public space. The drives are completely public and anyone can plug in to drop and download files.

Seriously, you can plug the USB drive into your laptop. Like that guy right there.
It's part of an art project called "Dead Drops" by Aram Bartholl and I have to say, it's pretty awesomely creative. I mean, if I saw a USB stick stick out of a random wall, I'd be dying to know what's in there. I'd have to plug in. It'd also be interesting to see what people would anonymously share on the public drive, well, until some jackass decides to upload a virus to screw up everybody's computer

7.You can create a stripe set between two thumb drives, essentially a mini RAID0 array. The data is then inaccessible unless both drives are mounted, so the two drives can be given to two trustworthy people and then only used in tandem, kind of like missile keys.
So it's not especially useful, but it is cool.

8.This can be done

9.this one might be silly but, maybe helpful,,, save all your important info like your mobile password(i have iphone and it is locked with 4 digit key), health insurance details, address, phone number and a copy of your driver's license and contact numbers of family, few close and good friends(incase of emergency to call them) and attach the pen drive to your house keys.

Hope this might be helpful in some situations(atleast you met with an accident and you are alone- police might want to use it if you dont have your wallet on you or some situations(you can fill)).

any suggestions are accepted and further edited on request..!