# What utilities should I have saved on my thumb-drive? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 8, 2005, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118 "2005-11-08T22:15:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118/1 "2005-11-08T22:15:48Z")
I have a 1GB thumb drive and would like to know what usefull utilities. or other worthwhile programs, I should have saved on it. Also, is it possible to boot from a thumb-drive? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118/2 "2005-11-08T22:52:11Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > I have a 1GB thumb drive and would like to know what usefull utilities. or other worthwhile programs, I should have saved on it. > > Also, is it possible to boot from a thumb-drive? Yes if the OS and BIOS allow booting from USB devices. Why carry anything (semi-permanently) around on it? Unless your a diagnostic tech needing ready altitudes it’s just a storage device. If you wanted to play around you cold put a bootable Linux OS on it. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118/3 "2005-11-08T23:04:29Z")
I have [Portable Firefox](http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/) on mine. Allows me the benefits of tabbed browsing on any computer, and also means i can carry all of my Bookmarks around with me. Excellent stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Jayrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Jayrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayrot)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118/4 "2005-11-08T23:26:38Z")
[Here’s](http://www.theinfobox.com/index.php/Portable_USB_Apps) a good list of 'em. I’ve not nearly all of them on my Cruzer will plenty of room to spare. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2005, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118/5 "2005-11-08T23:47:33Z")
> [@astro](#): > > If you wanted to play around you cold put a bootable Linux OS on it. Excellent idea - and you could go for [Damn Small Linux](http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/), whose 50MB presence you’ll barely even notice. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118/6 "2005-11-09T00:05:17Z")
Burn the utilities to a bootable CD, or three. Use the thumb drive as temporary transportable storage. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118/7 "2005-11-09T03:49:20Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I have [Portable Firefox](http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/) on mine. Allows me the benefits of tabbed browsing on any computer, and also means i can carry all of my Bookmarks around with me. > > Excellent stuff. Thank you for that link. I am so there. I am not allowed to install Firefox on my work laptop, and I hate using IE. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-utilities-should-i-have-saved-on-my-thumb-drive/330118/8 "2005-11-09T15:43:42Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > Also, is it possible to boot from a thumb-drive? Yes, it is. I found this out the hard way. A month or so ago I was fooling around with our server at work, trying to install a Web app and configure IIS. Windows 2003 was complaining that it wanted a service pack installed, so I went ahead and let it do the auto-update thing off the web. It wanted to reboot, so I did. It came up with “No OS found.” :eek: Did I mention I was on a deadline, and had to get a ton of stuff done? I nearly had a heart attack. I check the CD drive, nothing there. Checked the floppy drive, nope, no floppy. Rebooted a couple more times. Cursed Microsoft and their damned auto-update. Contemplated suicide. Then decided to boot to a C: prompt and see what I could find. Hmmm… “dir” listed a bunch of files that looked strangely familiar. In fact, that looked a lot like my USB drive contents. Is it plugged in? Yup. Could it be… did this @#$@# computer boot from a USB drive? Yes, it did. :smack: I unplugged the USB key and crisis averted.