Your Computing Life, on a USB Thumb Drive

[Mike Ungerman]

This is a great, multi-section blog from PC Magazine (now only electronic blogs) on the use of U3 and Portable Aps on USB drives as well as some other interesting options. Worth bookmarking, reading and then returning for reference again in the future.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343788,00.asp

[Mike Ungerman]

Follow-Up #1

A tip from PC Magazine's blog:

FAT Drives Lie

by Neil J. Rubenking

If you copy lots of small files to a USB drive, you may unexpectedly get a "Disk full" message even if plenty of space is left. This is especially likely if the small files have long names. No, really! USB drives are formatted using the FAT file system, and their root directory has a fixed number of directory entries. Every file has to have a directory entry, and those with long filenames take more than one. If you fill up the root directory you can't add any more files.

The solution is simple. Move at least one file off the drive, so the root directory is no longer full. Create a subdirectory and give it any name you like. Now copy all the rest of your files into the subdirectory. Unlike the root directory it will expand as needed, so you won't get a "Disk full" error until the USB drive is really, truly full.