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GTBPCUG Bay Bytes Newsletters
 http://gtbpcug.org/baybytes.htm

Association of personal Computer User Groups
Our GTBPCUG  isAa member of FACUG.

FACUG Newsletters

http://www.apcug.net/members/newsletters_index_page.htm

FACUG User Group Members

FROM A PREVIOUS NEWSLETTER

How Do Flash Drives Work?

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4963773_flash-drives-work.html

 Explore the features: of Windows ReadyBoost

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/readyboost.aspx

The main web site for u3 Portable Apps. You can download the Program from here or check the next  links below this one to see what will be available to you. http://portableapps.com/

Other Free Portable Applications for Flash Drives

The Portable Freeware Collection

http://www.portablefreeware.com/all.php

 Absolutely Free Software - Best Free Portable Windows Freeware Scroll down and/or check the categories on left of page.

http://nedwolf.com/Freeware-Portable.htm

This tool lets you format a flash drive. From Charlie Vanderford

A flash drive is terrific for use as an emergency boot device. Use this tool to format the drive. (Careful -- everything on the flash drive will be deleted.) Flash drives will be formatted as Fat32.

Then copy three system boot files from the root of your hard drive (usually c:\) -- boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect -- to the flash drive. Then set your BIOS to allow booting from the flash drive.

Download this free tool at:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,64963/description.html?tk=nl_hsxdwn

SanDisk u3 4gig Smart drive

Written by Parker Monroe – Webmaster of http://gtbpcug.org/

I use my SanDisk u3 4gig thumb/flash/smart drive to carry around several portable applications, but mainly to have with me a lot of utilities, as well as a document that holds a lengthy list of links to useful Web sites. Among the various free apps I installed was a portable version of Firefox, just in case I needed to have a Web browser to access the Web from/through another pc, esp. one that might have a corrupted IE.

A couple of nice features of the SanDisk thumb drive (and other brands may also have them) are that there is no cap to lose – the male USB plug simply slides in and out of the small case using one’s thumb. When pushed out, it locks in place, so that one can insert it into a USB port without the USB plug sliding back into the case.

Secondly, the SanDisk drive is always lit up when plugged into a live USB port. It also flashes when one is copying anything to it. If it doesn’t flash when moving or copying a file or files to it, then one knows the transfer did not occur.

One can view the contents of the thumbdrive by simply using Windows Explorer if one wishes, and one can store not only folders on the thumb drive but also sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders, and so on.

If one is going to store anything on any thumb drive, I strongly recommend keeping an identical copy of the files/folders on one’s pc, just in case the thumb drive is lost or becomes corrupted. At 4gigs, the SanDisk thumb drive can hold a lot of “stuff,” which would be very time consuming to replace if needed.

When the SanDIsk thumb drive is inserted into a USB port, an icon is placed in the Notification Area/Systray (down by the clock). Right-clicking on that icon brings up a short menu, one item of which is “Open U3 Launchpad,” an attractive and useful menu.

An important note: when one wants to remove the thumb drive from the USP port, one should always right-click on that small icon, and select “Safely eject U3 smart drive.” A message will then come up and advise that it is Safe to Remove U3 smart drive, or other messages may come up indicating that there are one or more open applications or menus.

Failure to do this before removing the drive can result in corruption of the drive. And, on some pc’s, failure to properly remove the thumb drive might result in those pc’s not knowing or realizing that your thumb drive has been removed, which could affect future use of that USB port