I figured I would compile a list of different uses for
flash drives
.
I will do this kind of randomly and update whenever I come across new ideas and information.
As it’s doubtful that this list will ever be completed I invite you to make additions through your comments.
- Transporting personal data like documents, photos and videos. This is probably the most common use for capacities between 16MB and 8GB .
- Storing and accessing game data, especially saved games. This is very popular with playstations .
- Running software and applications, mostly combined with the data stored on the flash drive. This is great with standalone programs such as VLC media player as they’re pretty independent of any operating system. (Btw, VLC is the best video program there is IMO.)
- Your walking music library. Especially useful with a car or home stereo that has a USB port.
- Your actual mp3 player.
- Storing and providing medical data, especially in emergencies (see
medical flash drives
)
- Transferring or running anti-virus and repair programs. You may be able to rescue your machine from that pestering infection of your system and files. Of course you could also get a virus through a memory stick but let’s not think about that.
- Booting up your system. Who needs ridiculous floppy disks or recovery CDs when you can have a nifty, bootable flash drive?
- Backing up valuable data when tweaking around with your system or trying to repair it. Finally it feels good to format that entire hard disk…
- Increasing disk cache. I’m thinking of virtual memory here or the ReadyBoost feature in Vista.
