Fun with flash drives...

hey, I just bought my first flash drive ever... (yeah i'm late) but I was wondering what kind of fun things I can do with it... I wanna know the craziest things anyone has done... I mean, i could install a game or an os, that's kinda cool... But i can't think of anything that'd be really awesome... a little help on idea's and or the process of getting there would be cool. ( and i don't really want to stuff my flash drive into a rubber frog/duck/cow... so none of that please) haha. :-p

1 gig memorex "travel drive" is what i'm runnin... any good ideas would be awesome! thanx

Put your flash drive one one rail on a train track and a coin on the other and see which one looks coolest when they get run over.

haha, yeah, that might be a good idea... but i kinda want to keep it functional (the train idea).. that and i'd have to find a train somwhere, and find out when it runs every day... that's requires getting up from my computer... anyway.

Some tools might be nice... and yes, the transfer rates on BIG files are terrible... but much faster on a mass of small files (600mb of music transfers 2x as fast or more than a 600mb movie) at least for me. I was kind of wondering why more devices don't have usb ports just for thumb drives (eg car stereos, mp3 players, etc.) you know, make in dash cd players obsolete, haha. especially with the price of flash being down so low now. i mean 10 bucks a gig was unheard of last year, and now it's common place. :-p

Clarion does have an in dash unit that you can hook up a flash drive directly into the face of it.

Where & how did you get the portable firefox? Would be nice for using my schools computers, I hate IE.

I have used it as a Windows "pagefile.sys" before. It is OK. I have 4GB of Main Memory DDR2, so it does not help much. Right now, I am hunting down "free" portable application to store on my flash memory stick. So far, I have found Firefox, Acrobat Reader, and Adobe Photoshop.

hummm, I wonder if gimp will work on a thumb drive.

any app that stores all its files in its home directory should be able to do it.

You can copy save files over to it and hack your XBOX.
You can remove the casing and encapsulate it in a lego.
You can get a wireless bridge that supports USB drives, then hide it away for secure, stealproof storage.

You can sharpen it to a fine point and toss it like a ninja star.

You can put porn on it and put it in a school computer. Auto play will begin playing the videos automaticly. (make sure volume is up for maximum effectiveness).

To MU: Are you saying that creating a PXE boot server is not fun or exciting? lol.

I use portable Firefox and Portable VLC off of my OCZ Rally Gen1 1gb USB Key. Its very fast, and is useful on my dads laptop, on which he doesnt want any new programs installed on.

My dad and I have 6 USB keys alltogether:
1x Sandisk Cruzer Micro 256mb
2x Sandisk Cruzer Micro 512mb
1x EP Memory 1gb
1x OCZ Rally Gen1 1gb
1x 2gb ADATA key

The OCZ is by far the best. The ADATA is not that great and takes up a lot of room. The EP memory and Sandisk keys are okay. If I were to get a new key it would be the 4gb OCZ Rally2 for $40 or so

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227145

You can install programs onto a key, but when you try to use it on another PC, you have to install the program. I did this with the Imperial Glory Demo.

You can hack the program to work off of a flash drive. That, either or get portable apps, or U3 ones

easy, i put Halflife on my corsair GT 2GB, it run on really old PC's as well as new.

easy, when you istall a disk copy of HL, (not a steam version), it asks you to specify where you want it installing, it gives you a standard place (Cprog files...) but i said I (my drive) and it installed. i can launch it by clicking on the exe.

however keep your keycode handy as you need to re enter it each time you log onto a NEW computer as it si saved int he registry.

NOTE: some network have policy which dont allow you to run of removable storage, if so copy file on Documents folder or desktop.

If this still doesnt work the the NTFS policies have been changed and it not worth trying to combat it. hope this helps.

I wasn't talking about cds, almost all the companies have one that runs mp3's off cds. I was talking about one that you plug a usb flash right into the front and it plays.

Clarion Double-Din USB headunit

Clarion Single-Din USB Head Unit

Now those are only a couple of the ones they have. I have a GM car, so I was seriously thinking about the Double din one. I will say you pay a premium for the technology though. Their Cheapest one with USB is 299.99 I think they have four total that do it. Now I am not sure about other companies as I haven't really looked, I am not seriously in the market for it right now, as I don't have the money.

That's why I carry mine in my pocket. That says "I'm a geek... but I'm not going to let you find out that easily!"

Gimp portable. Also on portableapps...

is it part of one of the suites that they have?

still ... darn!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_ [...] uter_games

MOO2

using a portable password manager would be good word play with the whole USB Key aspect of it

yeah, i understood what you were talkin about... I was just saying that i wouldn't want a cd player with a usb plug in it... i was thinking more or less just a usb plug and controls and displays.... that's cool though.. i just don't understand why it's not a standard... cuz it's so cheap. and so effective. :-p

MS has been cracking down on xbox hacking so.....

Just finished installing HL1 on my OCZ Rally. It took like 20-25min

Im going to try it on another PC now....

I hope it automatically saves the save files onto the key...

At school this year, we kept playing Counter-Strike from the network trash folder or portable hard drives, never installed a thing, just copied the folder to the trash once and everyone was playing straight from the folder.

If you're looking for an OS to run off a flash drive, try Knoppix. I have it on my 1GB drive, and if you know your way around Linux, you can modify it so you can add extra apps and save files and have a persistent directory. Well worth checking out.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Plenty of choices on that site, you can even do Ubuntu, but Knoppix is the easiest one.