As the storage available on USB thumb drives continues to increase exponentially (256 Gig drives were released late in 2010), new uses for these portable media wonders are coming online nearly every day. Following are some of the creative uses people and businesses are finding for their drives:
Crime Fighting
Microsoft has developed COFEE for law enforcement. It is a set of applications that can extract digital evidence from a suspect’s computers. The software on the USB thumb drive can pull data off the computer without compromising the evidence. If you want to know what COFEE stands for it’s Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor.
Give your PC a boot
A Live USB capability allows you to reboot your computer from USB thumb drives on some systems. Perhaps just as important, they allow you to do some vital tasks, such as data repair and scanning for viruses from the insertable drive.
Go for a piggyback ride
With Windows 7 and the older Window Vista, ReadyBoost lets you use USB thumb drives to increase operating system memory, giving your computer a little power and performance boost.
You don’t need no stinkin’ iPod
Sure, iPods are kind of cool. But you can do virtually the same thing with a combo device that is part USB thumb drive and part MP3 player. Just plug the drive into your computer, download your tunes and head off for a day at the beach. Many even have batteries that recharge through the USB connection. Of course, any flash drive will let you share your music with your friends wherever you are and many car stereos are now coming with a USB port. About time!
Groovin’ with the high score
The arcade game In the Groove 2 allows you to slot in your USB thumb drive to save high scores, dance edits and screenshots as you play. So if you’re a dancing fool and max out the game with the highest score of all time, you have proof of it, thanks to your drive. If only they had the same technology for fishing so you could prove you really did hook a fish “this big” (extend your hands as you say it).
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. While inexpensive USB thumb drives have been used to back up and transfer files for some time now and have become the must-have item at trade shows, thanks to their promotional power, other uses are just beginning to find their way into the marketplace.
One thing’s for sure. As these drives continue to get even more storage space and USB 3.0 becomes the norm rather than the exception, you can look forward to new ideas and innovations coming online for many years to come.