People often only see USB drivers or thumb drives as a means to lug around their files, but they are capable of so much more.
This is where you may ask, “What is different now than in the past?”
The answer is a combination of more features in newer operating systems and the availability of larger capacity USB drives. Until recently, 8-16 GB or maybe even 32GB were the largest thumb drives on the market. You can find 64GB for sale online and 128 GB drives are planned for release later this year. Larger drive sizes increase the potential uses.
Early adapters of larger capacity USB drives should expect to pay for it. You should also expect to see the price decrease over time.
I have touched on some potential thumb drive uses in previous articles, but other uses have emerged because of the availability of higher capacity drives. One of my favorite uses for USB drives is to store portable applications – scaled down versions of some of the programs on your computer.
Some other possible uses are to make a pocket-size full backup of your computer. You can make a clone or mirror backup, based on using an 128GB thumb drive and backup software such as Norton’s or Acronis that allows image backups. This is also based on the premise that most home computers don’t come close to using 128 GB of disk space.
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