When it comes to accessing our Dropbox folder, there are many ways to do it. You can install the Dropbox desktop client on all your computers, open the browser and access the web version of Dropbox, or if you are on the move and own an Android, iPhone or Blackberry, you can download the app and access it on the move. If none of the above work for you, one last way is to carry your Dropbox on your USB drive and bring it everywhere you go.

DropboxPortableAHK is a Dropbox portable app. It is based on the AutoHotKey script and allows you to place your Dropbox folder in a USB drive and sync it anywhere, everywhere.

Note: DropboxPortableAHK only works in Windows.

1. Download DropboxPortableAHK (~0.5MB, zip file)

2. Unzip the zip file. Plug in your USB drive and move the “DropboxPortableAHK” folder (the folder that you have just unzipped) to the USB drive.

3. Open the DropboxPortableAHK folder and double click the “DropboxPortableAHK.exe” file to run it.

4. It will prompt you to download the Dropbox daemon. Click Ok to proceed. If you are interested, you can also get it to download the beta version of Dropbox.

5. After the download finished, the configuration window will appear. From here, you can set your Dropbox folder and configure the app to update automatically.

6. Lastly, it will walk you through the Dropbox setup process. If your USB drive comes with limited capacity (say 2GB or less), it is best for you to select “Selective Sync” and select only the important folders to sync.

That’s it. Once the sync is completed, you can bring your Dropbox everywhere in your USB drive. Anytime you need to sync your files, simply plug in your USB drive and double click the DropboxPortableAHK.exe file to run it.

DropboxPortableAHK is not affiliated with Dropbox.com, but it is still easy to install and use. If you really need to bring your Dropbox on your USB drive, this is the best solution.

Download and installation

Download Disk Drill here. The current version is still in beta testing and is available for free download.

Once installed, it will prompt you to install driver for Disk Drill.

Once it is done, you will have a choice to view the tutorial slides or go direct to the main screen.

Usage

The main screen is easy to navigate. There are only two options: Protect and Recover.

Disk Drill Disk Protection

When you click on the “Prevent data loss”, you can see all the available drives that you can protect.

If you plug in a new USB drive (or external drive), it will show up in the list as well.

Select the drive (or partition) that you want to protect and at the bottom, click the shield icon to protect it.

What this protection feature does is to continuously monitor the device for data change. When something’s deleted, the recovery vault remembers all the original properties of the deleted items and makes it possible to easily recover this data later on.

More configuration options are available to specifically select/exclude the folders that you want to protect. Click on the Advanced button to reveal the configuration options.

Disk Drill Recovery

Likewise, the Recovery feature is also easy to use. Pick the disk that you want to recover data from, perform a scan scan and recover the required data.

Like any other data recovery software, there is no guarantee that your data can be recovered. It all depends on how recent it was deleted and whether it has been overwritten. In general, if you can preview the file, the chance of restoring it is high.

Once the scan is finished, you can either click on the Preview button to view the file or the Recover button to restore the file. If you choose the Recover option, it will prompt you to choose a Save destination. Remember, do not choose the same destination in the disk, it will overwrite the data.

Conclusion

Being a free and easy to use data protection and recovery software, Disk Drill is definitely worth you checking out. It is currently in beta testing. There is no info on the pricing yet, but CleverFiles will supply free lifetime licenses to every users who actively provide feedback and bugs during the beta testing period.

Portable apps can be very handy if you only need a few applications. Portable Virtualbox enables you to bring along the whole OS in a thumb drive, but it can be slow and often take up a big chunk of your USB storage space. What if you can have the best of both world – a lightweight and portable OS that contains all the applications you need?

Prayaya V3 creates a portable Windows operating system on your removable storage device such as USB drive, iPod, external hard disk etc and allows you to install your own applications (and games), customize your own settings and even manage your own bookmarks. You can then bring the storage device around in your pocket and use it on any Windows computer.

Note: We have free giveaway for this great software. Read on for more detail.

Unlike portable virtualbox, Prayaya does not need a full OS image. What it does is to hook the kernel of the Windows PC and redirect the file operations. It only needs to store the important kernel files in the removable drive to work in any Windows PC. This also explains why it doesn’t take up a lot of space in your USB drive. In fact, the installation only requires a mere 15Mb of free space.

Usage

Firstly, download the installer in your Windows PC (it works with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 32-bit). The trial version is fully functional for 30 days. Plug in your removable device and run the Prayaya installer.

When prompted, select the removable drive as the installation destination.

After the installation, open your Windows Explorer and navigate to the removable drive. Double click on “StartV3.exe” to run Prayaya.

You will be asked to login to your Prayaya account. If you do not have a Prayaya account, click on the “register account” link to create a new account. This will be your main user account, so don’t forget your username and password.

Next, you will see the Prayaya virtual desktop. It is a stripped down version of the host Windows OS (If the host OS is WIndows XP, the virtual desktop will also follow the XP layout).

The basic virtual desktop comes with system applications like Windows Explorer, calculator, notepad, Paint, Games etc. Since my host Windows is running IE9, the virtual desktop also have a copy of IE9 browser.

There is a toolbar at the top of the virtual desktop. This will also be your main command center. The center icon allows you to switch between the host OS and the virtual desktop (or use the shortcut key “Alt + q”).

Applications

The installation of third party applications is the same as in any Windows platform. Simply download the installer and run it within the virtual desktop. Prayaya also comes with a software list with hyperlink for you to download the installer.

Screenshot of GIMP running in the virtual desktop:

Virtual desktop or small windows mode

In the Settings, you can configure Prayaya to start in a virtual desktop or small windows mode.

In the small windows mode, you will only see a small window (akin to your Start menu) with links to your applications. This will allow you to work on the host computer and have access to your virtualized apps. For those who have used PortableApps, you will find this interface familiar.

Things to improve

At the moment, there is no ways to save the sate (aka hibernation mode) of the virtual desktop, just like in Virtualbox. Everytime you start Prayaya, you have to restart the apps individually, which can take up a lot of time, depending on the host machine speed. Hopefully the developer can add in the “save state” feature in the next version.

Free Giveaway

The developer of Prayaya V3 has gladly sponsored us 5 license keys to be given away. Here’s how you can participate:

Step 1

Be our Facebook fan or follow us in Twitter:

STEP 2

Fill up the form below. This is to make sure that we can contact you when you win the license. We promise that we won’t spam you.

Update: the giveaway contest is now closed.

STEP 3
Share this post either in Facebook or Twitter, and leave a comment.

This giveaway begins now and ends Thursday, 7th October at 2359hrs Eastern Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Update: the giveaway contest is now closed.

Share and enjoy!

That’s when online sync services like Dropbox and iDriveSync comes handy, these services use the internet to sync data between multiple computers you own.

The disadvantage of using an online sync service is that they take some time to upload the files from the host computer and then download them over at the client computer. So if you have really large collection of movies or photos, online sync seems to be a tedious option. Moreover, all these sync services are not entirely free and to upgrade for more space, you have to pay a monthly fee.

But what if you do not have internet access at home or office? What if you need a simple utility which can sync data between multiple computers using a removable drive?

Syncsharp is a brilliant utility which can be used to sync the contents of any number of folders between two computers running Windows. The program requires .NET framework to be installed on both computers and does not require any installation. Just drop the syncsharp.exe file on both computers and you are ready for the sync process.

Sync Folders Between Two computers

1. After you have downloaded Syncsharp, run the executable and add a new Sync Task, as shown below:

2. In the next window that appears, first choose the source directory or folder by browsing to the directory on the source computer. Then select the target location as the USB drive, as shown below:

If you would regularly perform sync activity of this specific folder, it’s recommended to enter a name of the sync task so that you can use the saved task and save time later on.

Once you are done with all the above steps, click “OK”.

3. In the same way, create a new task for each folder in your local computer which you want to sync with the second computer. Make sure to keep a safe backup of the “profiles” folder because this folder contains the data about your sync activity.

4. Now open the SyncSharp application on the source computer and select all the sync task. Hit “Control + S” and all the folders are backed up in your USB device one by one. You will see the following window once the process is over:

5. Now unplug your USB drive from the source computer and plug it in the USB port of your second computer.

6. Open Syncsharp.exe from the second computer and choose the source directory as your removable drive. Then choose the folder in the second computer where you want the data to be synched, as shown below:

7. Save the task and hit Control + S. You are all done, sit back and wait for the data to get synced from the USB drive to the second computer.

You can choose to sync the content of the second computer with the first one, this will have no effect with the earlier backup.

Why SyncSharp Is Better Than a Simple Copy And Paste?

You may raise a question – Why use another tool when I can easily use a simple copy paste and copy the data in my USB drive? Then I can cut paste the data on my other computer.

True, but only when you have a small number of files to be synched between multiple computers. If you have a large amount of data to consider which may include endless images, PDF or Word documents, folders and nested folders – it becomes impossible to memorize the content of each directory and copy the files you want.

Moreover, at the end of the day you need a simple tool which will free you from staring at the computer screen just to take a routine backup. Just plug your removable hard disk, import a sync profile and hit the Sync button. Then plug the removable drive on the other computer, import the sync task and hit the Sync button. That’s it all the data will be mirrored between both the computers – you will not lose anything because both the directories will contain all the files and folders before taking the backup.

If you have multiple computers at your home, it would be even better to connect them via an ethernet cable and use the “My Network places” folder to sync or copy data between multiple computers.

What backup or sync tool do you use ? Do you prefer using an online sync tool or an offline one ? Share your ideas in the comments.

Image credit: DesheBoard

How to set up Predator

1. Download Predator and install it.

2. Now insert in a freshly formatted flash drive.

3. You will now get to see the “Preferences” window for the tool. You can now set it up based on your requirements or consult the following screenshots for the references.

4. Once you have properly configured the preferences for the tool, go down to the “Flash Drive” section that can be found in the “Main Options” tab. Now press the button “Create key” to create the key. You can see the “Creation in progress…” during the process and “Creation Complete” once its done.

How to enable the guard

Once everything is done you will be asked to restart Predator to enable monitoring (only necessary in the first run). After you restart the application, you will notice a (animated) green bubble in the notification area. You will notice the bubble going red at times notifying the key has been accessed. That is all. You are all set to test the app.

How Predator works

Remove the flash drive now and wait for a while as your PC screen turns complete black. This means that your PC is now locked. You can go around and have your lunch break (without worrying about your boss checking your PC for your secret job applications :) or your colleague simply trying to get a look at your project file). Be sure to carry the flash drive safe in your pocket.

Once you are ready to log in, insert the flash drive and wait. A login screen flashes in where a timer (20 seconds) is running and an password field is present. Enter your password that you used while creating the key and hit enter. If the password is right, you get logged into your PC with all windows (you were working on) minimized.

What if the password is not right? That’s when someone else is trying to log in. Right? That’s when Predator throws a movie-style “Access Denied” screen with an awkwardly irritating intruder alert which is enough to alert you.

How to disable the tool

This is pretty simple. All you have to do is right click on the notification area icon and click “Pause Monitoring” and you will notice the bubble has turned yellow (with no animation).

NOTE: To use this option you have to enable pausing in the tool “Preferences”. To do that open “Preferences”, go to “Advanced Options” tab and select the checkbox named “Enable Pause”.

Other advanced features

Predator has also got one professional version (worth $29) which supports many other features like Twitter Log (that notifies you of any breach via direct message in Twitter, enabling you to keep track of your machine from a remote location), SMS and email alerts, multiple keys and many more.

WORD OF CAUTION :

Two things to be taken care of in Predator are,

1. Be sure to remember the password. You can disable the password check if you have a tendency to forget password. Open “Preferences”, go to Main Options tab and uncheck the checkbox “Always Required” under “Password” field. Disabling this doesn’t mean that the protection is not there. The USB key is still valid i.e without the USB the computer is still inaccessible.

2. I noticed my laptop keyboard wasn’t working when I tried to enter the password to log in using the flash drive. But using an USB keyboard, I was able to enter the password. I do not know if the problem happened for me only but I think you should know about it.

If you are overly concerned about your PC security, this tool is definitely worth paying price for. For me, I am pretty happy with the features offered by the free version.

If you know of any such software that serves the similar purpose, share with us. And also if you face any problem regarding this software let us know.

Thus sometimes you may need an operating system that would be portable, so that you can run it from your removable drive and from any computer. We have covered Mojopack earlier, which lets you carry a “self made system environment” in your USB drive. But Mojopack is not any operating system and it depends upon the host computer where you would be using it.

What if we could install and carry an operating system of our choice from the USB drive?

The answer: Virtual box made portable. The idea here is to install Virtualbox in your USB drive and use it to install a guest operating system. With this portable virtual disk, you can use this system in any computer you want.

How to Make VirtualBox Portable

1. To install Virtualbox in your removable drive, go to vbox and download the package (957 Kb). Choose the version 3.0 as shown below.

2. Run the set up and it will ask you for a location to unzip the files. Extract all the files to your USB drive.

3. The setup will extract all the files required to set up virtualbox in your USB drive. Now open the “Portable-Virtualbox” folder from the removable drive and double click the set up file as shown below.

4. Now you will be shown something like this

5. Select the checkboxes “Extract the files for a 32 bit system” and “Extract the files for a 64 bit system“. You can also choose to compress the files to save some precious space in your removable drive.

6. That’s it. Click the “Download Installation file for Virtualbox” button.

7. Immediately after that, you will see that the application has started downloading the setup files required to install portable Virtualbox. Wait for the download to finish. You will see a notification right in the middle of the screen and also in the system tray.

8. It would take some time to download the Virtualbox files. After the download is over, you will see a prompt as shown below

9. Now open your removable drive again and you would see a new icon named as “Virtual Box” (not to be confused with Portable Virtualbox icon). Double click it and you will see the usual Virtualbox wizard.

Complete the wizard and you are done with the installation part of portable Virtualbox in the removable drive.

Install a Portable Operating System in your Removable Drive

Now that Virtualbox is in your removable drive, you can easily create a virtual hard disk and install any operating system such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux etc. Start the virtual Box program and you can create a virtual hard disk. Save this hard disk in your removable drive as you would be using it from the USB drive only. Now here are some useful guides on how to install a new operating system with Virtualbox:

• How to Install Windows In Ubuntu Hardy with VirtualBox
• Share Your Virtualbox VM Across Different OS
• How To Run Android on Your Home PC with Virtualbox

Once you are done with the installation part you can carry the Operating system in the removable drive and use it on multiple computers. That concludes the tutorial on installing a portable operating system in your USB stick.

Advantages

There are a lot of advantages of using a portable Virtualbox hard disk and running an operating system with it. The biggest advantage is that you can run the OS on any computer which does not have virtual box installed. Another major advantage is keeping your hard disk free from virtual hard disks or you may even copy the virtual hard disk from one computer to another.

Hope you would find this software useful. What’s your take on portable Virtualbox? Do let us know through a comment.

Take a tour to the  video demo to know actually what Mojopack is.

Mojopack Installing Procedure:

Download Mojopack from here and install it in USB drive. At the time of installing it will ask you about installation location. Just click on the select option, right side of the top address bar and select the USB drive from a drop down list. Then click on “Next” to continue.

Now it will start to install the Mojopack in your USB drive and take several minutes.

After the complete installation click on “Finish” button at the bottom. Now the software will automatically run itself and it will personalize the default settings with several minutes. As the first time opening it will take much times. At the time of opening  it will access all supporting files from your USB drive so don’t plug off it.

Now after the initialization, the Mojopack operating system will run and looks like the same of your Windows XP operating system. You can install your useful software like Microsoft Office, Nero 8, VLC media player etc from here. Game installation will also be possible. The installed files will be kept securely in USB drive where the operating system is pre-installed. Now go away and don’t forget to carry the USB drive in your pocket because now it is an entire OS.

Now plug-in your USB drive and look the icon of your removable USB drive has changed into Mojopack icon. Double click on it to run.

The Mojopack desktop will be shown in a glamorous and charming interface. Don’t waste time and start your job here. You must require a Windows XP environment to run Mojopack because it will use some windows files as resources.

The vital applications provided by Mojopack are desktop icons, start menu, internet explorer, background wallpaper and my documents. When you install programs it will be added to Mojo-control Panel. At the top of the Mojopack window you will see the Mojobar which would facilitate you to switch over between host and guest computer. The only drawback  is it is very slow to run.

Have you tried Mojopack?

Primary Checks

Prior to fixing your error, you need to do some basic checks

1. Make sure the write-protection latch of your drive (if it has any) is turned off.

2. If you are using an updated antivirus, try scanning the drive for viruses.

Solutions

There are many solutions to this problem and actually every one of them may have worked for some users but may not work for you. Hence I’m trying to enlist all the feasible solutions, so if one doesn’t work, try the other one.

1. Fixing Registry

• Press Winkey + R (or just open the Run from Start menu). Type regedit and hit enter.
• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
  
  NOTE : If this is not there, you may need to add this entry. For that download the batch file add.bat from here, and double-click the file. The entry will be added to registry.
• Now in the right pane double-click the key WriteProtect. Now set the Value Data to 0 (zero) and press OK.
• Exit Registry and restart your PC.
• Now try using your USB Drive.

2. Using Formatting Utility

As the solution suggests we will be formatting the USB drive, so backup all the items in the drive first before carrying out htis step.

• Download Apacer Formatting Utility.
• Unzip the pack to a folder. Now double-click the Start.bat file in that folder. This will initiate the formatting. Wait until the formatting completes or the LED of the drive stops blinking. If you fail once give it few more try.
• Now remove the pen-drive and plug it in to the PC again. Now, open RUN and type cmd and hit Enter.
• Now in the command prompt, type CHKDSK [usb-drive-letter]: /F. That’s it. You are done.

3. Trying a low-level format

This is yet another solution which will try to solve the problem by using a low-level format. Don’t forget to backup your drive items.

• Download the free utility HDD Low Level Format Tool.
• Now using it, perform a low-level format of your USB drive. If you fail once give it few more try.
• Now open RUN and type diskmgmt.msc, hit Enter.
• Now right-click the USB Drive and press Format. Now do as shown in the screenshot below. Then press OK.

4. For Transcend USB Drive Users

Transcend has its own Recovery Tool to get rid of this error.

• Go to the Transcend Product Support Page.
• Enter your Model No. of your USB Drive, hit Enter. Now select the product which which is most similar to yours from search results.
• Download the mFormat utility. If you are asked for serial no. enter your product serial no. or if you don’t have it enter this number: 1456784523.
• Plug-in your drive and run the utility to format your drive. You may need to try this method several times to fix the error.

Well as I said earlier that every single trick among all those listed above have solved the problem for many and has not for many others. Lets hope one of these will help you out of the “Write-protection” error. If you fail, feel free to ask. But if you succeed, please let us know which one worked for you, so that our future readers get a share of your valuable experience. Also, if you feel you have a better idea, let me know via comments.

In this tutorial, we will go through the way to create a Snow Leopard USB installer disk.

Requirement

• An existing Mac with functional DVD-ROM
• Snow leopard installer DVD (upgrade set or box set)
• A USB thumb drive of at least 8GB in size

Creating a USB installer disk

1. Plug in your USB drive. Backup all the data in the USB drive.

2. Insert your Snow Leopard Installer DVD into the DVD-ROM.

3. Go to Utility -> Disk Utility. You should see the USB drive and the SL installer DVD entries on the left pane.

4. Select the USB drive. On the right pane, click on the Partition tab.

5. Here are few things that you need to do:

• Under the Volume Scheme, select ’1 Partition‘ from the dropdown
• At the Name input field, enter a new name for the partition (I choose to give it the same name as the SL installer DVD).
• At the Format field, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the dropdown.

At the bottom, click on the Options button.

Select GUID partition table.

Click Apply. This will repartition and reformat the USB drive.

6. Once it is done, click on the Restore tab. You will see two input field: Source and Destination.

Drag the SL Installer DVD entry to the Source field.

Drag the newly formatted USB entry to the Destination field.

Click Restore.

This will copy the image from the DVD Installer to the USB drive. You can go for a coffee break now as the whole process takes about 30 mins.

When the whole process is done, you will be able to boot and install Snow Leopard from the USB drive.

To boot your Mac from USB, you just need to select the respective entry in System Preferences -> Startup Disk.

In the past, the dirty but effective way to access the iPhone from your Linux system is via SSH. This requires you to jailbreak your phone and it voids the warranty. With iFuse, you can now mount your iPhone/iPod Touch under Linux with just a USB cable. You can also view/edit/cut/copy/paste the file just like any USB disk drive.

Installation

Open up your terminal, type the following to open up your APT sources file

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Insert the following lines to the end of the file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonabeck/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonabeck/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

The above is assuming that you are using Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty). For any other version, simply replace the jaunty by the respective version name (hardy, intrepid, karmic etc)

Save and close the file.

Back in the terminal:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com F0876AC9
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ifuse

Once the installation is done, connect your iPhone to your computer via the USB cable.

Open up your Nautilus. You should see the iPhone/iPod entry at the side pane. This show that it is already mounted in your system.

Click on the entry to view the filesystem.

Things that you can do

1. View/copy/download photos.

You can now manage the photos that you have taken with your iPhone without iTunes.

2. Create folders, upload/download files

You can now use your iPhone as a USB drive and use it for file storage. To allow confusion/conflict with the other system files, it is best to create a custom folder (and name it My Folder) and store all your files there.

3. Managing address book/calendar (upcoming)

Work is underway to sync the contact data with Conduit.

What you cannot do now

Manage your music database

Apple uses a cryptographic signing algorithm to encrypt all the music files. While you can access the music folder, there is no way that you can transfer your music over and get it to work in your iPhone.

Note:
1. iFuse is not Ubuntu-specific app. It works for most Linux distro as well.

2. Mac users can also use iPhoneDisk to achieve similar functionality.

1. Cyberduck

Opensource Mac FTP client. If you aren’t using Cyberduck, here is a basic run through.

2. Portable VLC OS X

The play anything media player. Highly recommended if you are using multiple computers.

3. Portable Adium

All-in-one instant messenger (Google, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, MSN…)

4. Portable Firefox Cross Plartform

Firefox for both Windows and OSX. Use Firefox with add-ons like Xmarks to sync your bookmarks.

5. Portable Thunderbird Cross Platform

The cross platform version of Mozilla Thunderbird will allow you to access your email application anywhere you have a computer with a USB port.

6. Netfixer

Easy to use webpage capture tool. Use the optional bookmarklet to activate the application.

7. Camino

An Opensource web browser built for Macs by Mozilla.  Some Firefox-like add-ons are available, but not near as many. Greasemonkey scripts can also be converted for use with Camino.

8. Neverball

Game of skill and patience. Use the mouse to tilt the floor and move the ball; it sounds easy, but it isn’t.

9. FSuite

Over 40 portable apps spanning everything from games to word processors, media players to a BitTorrent client, you shouldn’t be lacking anything in this pack of applications.

10. SmillaEnlarger

A image tool used to resize, especially to magnify .BMP files in high quality.

11. iStumbler

Find AirPort, Bluetooth, Bonjour and other wireless signals and services. Lots of extra information about the networks available in the area.

12. Bean

Free rich text editor compatible with Microsoft Word.

13. ViewIt

Quick-to-open image viewer which supports nearly all commonly used image formats.

14. Inquisitor

Lets you find information on the web in the same way you use Spotlight. Start typing and it will begin to return sites based on your criteria.

15. iBackup

Simple, small application to help automate backups.

16. Paintbrush

A simple Cocoa-based image editor for when Photoshop would be too much of a hassle.

17. Maintenance

System maintenance and repair utility, with different versions for Tiger and Leopard. Some uses are: repair permissions, delete applications, reset Spotlight’s Index, run periodic scripts…

18. Tofu

Text reader that arranges text on a page in columns sized properly for the window you have open. No scrolling up and down, just left to right.

19.TextWrangler

Very powerful very free text editor great for distraction free writing.

20. Portable Abiword

Opensource word processor. Read, write and save to OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Rich Text Format.

21. Xmind

Opensource mind mapping and collaboration application.

22. Portable Gimp

Opensource image editing. Many very powerful features in a very lightweight package.

23. Portable Inkscape

Opensource graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw or Freehand

24. Portable OpenOffice.org OS X

Complete Opensource office suite able to read and write to most  commonly used file types.

25. AppCleaner

An app uninstaller that removes all of the accompanying application files.

26. PureFTPdManager

Opensource multi-user Secure FTP manager, great fro servers or networks.

27. Portable Nvu OS X

Opensource web authoring similar to Dreamweaver

28. Portable Audacity OS X

Opensource recording and editing software.

29. Google Chrome

Google’s web browser on a stick.

30. Smultron

Simple text editor with a massive amount of features

31. Highlight

Screen highlighter (great for presentations)

32. OnyX

Maintenance, optimization, and personalization utility (10.4 or 10.5

33. uTorrent

P2P file transfer. (Here are some set up instructions)

34. Fugu

An opensource SFTP, SCP and SSH client. Esay to set up and use.

35. Portable Check Off

Stand alone to-do manager.

36. Transmission

BitTorrent client. Great for creating and downloading torrent files.

*37 through 42 are listed to only work with OSX 10.4

37. Portable Safari

Bookmarks and preferences on your portable drive.

38. Portable Mail

The same mail and preferences on your portable drive you are used to on your main Mac (use with Portable Address Book).

39. Portable iCal

All your calendar events can go with you on your portable drive.

40. Portable Address Book

Contacts are kind of essential, take them with you on your portable drive.

41. Portable iChat

Keep all your buddies on your portable drive.

42. SyncPAppX

Sync your portable apps with local ones.

Which portable Mac apps do you use?

image credit: Michael Dale Bernard

Although I have previously covered two useful software for encrypting USB drive: Windows 7 BitLocker and TrueCrypt, one thing that prevented me from using them on the move is that these two software require administrator privilege (or the ultimate version of Windows 7) to use, which in most Internet cafes, you don’t have access to.

There are also several others encryption software out there, but the one that worked well for me, and apparently free and does not require any administrator privileges is Rohos Mini Drive.

What Rohos Mini Drive does is to create hidden and encrypted partition on the USB flash drive memory. When you plug in your USB drive, you won’t get to see the hidden partition. Only when you run the Rohos application (within the USB drive) and enter your password, then will the hidden partition appear. Since the Rohos application does not require access (or modification) to the computer’s system, it doesn’t require any administrator privileges to run it. This is great for those who need to access their encrypted data on a public computer that they don’t have administrator access to.

Installing Rohos Mini Drive

The initial step to create an encrypted USB drive requires you to install and run the application in your own computer. This will require administrator privileges.

Download Rohos Mini Drive (Windows only).

Double click the application to install it in your computer.

Once the installation is done, insert in your USB drive. You don’t have to reformat the drive, but you have to make sure that there is enough space to create the new partition.

Open the Rohos Mini Drive application from the Start menu.

In the main window, click Setup USB Key

Rohos Mini Drive will proceed to detect your USB drive. Click Change to edit the partition configuration.

In the configuration window, you can configure the Disk letter that the hidden partition to be mounted to, the encrypted partition size (maximum 2GB), the file system type and the encryption algorithm. The last thing is to point the installation location to your USB drive. The encrypted file will come with a .rdi extension.

Click OK to proceed.

Back to the USB Key Creation window, enter your password and make sure that it is a safe one. Click Create Disk.

Encryption completed.

Now open your Windows Explorer and navigate to your USB drive. You should see only the Rohos Mini application (which was not there originally).

Double click the Rohos mini application. Enter the encryption password when prompted.

You should now see your hidden partition prompted in the drive letter that you have chosen earlier.

You can install all your portable apps or store your confidential data on the hidden partition now.

What other software do you use to encrypt your USB drive?

In Windows 7, there is this new Bitlocker To-Go function that allows you to encrypt your USB drive. In the event that your drive is stolen, there is no way that others can access your data, unless he/she has your password.

If you have not installed Windows 7 on your computer, we do have a great tutorial that teaches you how to do so.

In your computer (the one running Windows 7), plug in your USB drive.

Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> Bitlocker Drive Encryption. Click Turn On Bitlocker for the removable drive option

You will be asked the method you want to use to unlock the drive (after encryption). There are two methods available: Password or Smart Card. Password is the easier one, but less powerful. In this case, I picked Password.

It will then prompt you to save/print your recovery key. This will come in useful if you have forgotten the password in the future.

Once you are done with the setting, click Next to start encrypting your USB drive. The whole process will take quite some time, depending on the size of your device.

You should see the following message when the encryption is done.

To check if your USB drive is really encrypted, unmount and remount the the USB drive. If the encryption is intact, it will prompt you to enter your password.

Note: If you are using a Windows version other than Windows 7 Ultimate, the Bitlocker To-Go encryption only allows you to read and copy files from the USB drive. You won’t be able to edit or add new files to the drive.

To decrypt the USB drive, simply follow the same procedure as above, but select Turn Off Bitlocker in the control panel.

Choose Wisely

When choosing a portable drive to use, there are a couple things to think about. Not every portable drive will work well for running an application. The write and read speed is crucial here. If the flash drive has a low speed, it will not work for running Firefox portable for example. Too much data is going back and forth so the program will freeze up or crash. I’m not saying you need to spend a lot of money on a drive, just take a look at the specifications before you buy. Something to take into consideration if you are using a SD card, there may be speed limitations imposed by the device the card is in.

1. PStart

PStart is essentially a start menu for information on your USB drive. This handy little application hangs out in the tool bar and runs in the background. When right clicked, a screen pops up and shows all of the programs you have added shortcuts for. Believe me, when I found this amazing little piece of software, it made using my USB drive A LOT easier.

2. Pidgin

Pidgin is an on open source instant messaging client. There are plug-ins which allow it to work with almost all the protocols available including Facebook, twitter and Myspace. Some other plug-ins allow people on your buddy list to see what your listening to on Last.fm or various other media players while you type to them.

3. VLC

VLC is known to most as a simplistic media player that plays any kind of audio or video format you can throw at it. That being said, there is no reason not to have this in your portable arsenal.

4. Firefox

Firefox is another no brainer. It offers all the functionality of the web version, except it fits in your pocket. All of the add-ons and special feature you may use when you are at home are now travel sized. The beauty of using Firefox from the USB drive is, none of your information is left on the computer you are using; Everything is saved on the portable drive. Other Mozilla applications such as Thunderbird and Sunbird are available in a portable version too.

5. uTorrent

uTorrent is a very popular and very light weight BitTorrent client. It uses a very low amount of system resources making it a great addition to any portable drive.

6. GIMP

Gimp is a great free replacement for Photoshop. The main difference between GIMP and Photoshop are the menus.

7. KeePass Password Safe

KeePass Password Safe saves you from having to remember all of your passwords. You choose one master password, that’s it. Isn’t that a lot easier than remembering the log in for all of your email accounts, network password and log in info for all those websites? I thought so.

8. Filezilla

Filezilla is a FTP uploader. If you have a website or blog and need to upload files while on the go, this is your go to application. With its drag and drop support and straight forward set up, it is a great cross platform FTP uploader.

9. 7Zip

7Zip is a great file decompression software that works with 18 different file types. It can also compress files into 5 different file types. The compression rate is greater than Winzip (according to the 7Zip site).

10. Sudoku

Sudoku is a very addictive game that I would have a hard time leaving out. It is always a good idea to have a way to let your mind wander; With a game that makes you think in a  strategic way, your exercising your brain as you play. How can anyone say exercising your mind is a waste of time? If you aren’t into games like this, other games are out there like poker, minesweeper knockoffs and others.

What other applications do you take with you on the road?

Image credit :R-evolution Photography