5 Uses Of USB Drive You Probably Don’t Know

To transport data from one PC to another the first device that comes to our mind is USB or a pen drive. Undoubtedly in today’s era the storage media has touched new heights yet many of us still use USB not only to transfer data but also for saving it.

But did you guys know that the use of USB is just not bounded as a storage media. USB is more powerful and be used for many other useful purposes like locking and unlocking a computer. Increasing performance of the PC and many more.

Can’t believe? Then just go through the article and learn 5 uses of a USB stick that you might be unaware of.

Lock & Unlock Your Computer

Data security is the need of the hour. You might be surprised to know that you can easily lock and unlock your PC with this physical device. It will not only look but will make your PC secure.

Just use the Predator application and turn the USB into an access device/key for signing in and out from your PC. Once you have set up the app on USB, you no longer need to use the conventional sign-in process of typing in the password. Plug in the USB stick to sign in to unlock your PC and unplug it to lock the PC.

Easy Connect to Wireless Networks

Quite a few of the users know that Windows has an inbuilt feature that can help you to save the existing wireless network’s name, password, and other information on a USB.

Once saved, you can you can use the same USB drive to connect to the WiFi network on other computers and that too without typing in the password.

• To save the WiFi settings on a USB flash drive, click on the wireless icon located at the lower right corner of the screen. Now right click on the WiFi network you are using and select Properties.
• In the Wireless Network Properties window click on the Connection tab. Now click on link “Copy this network profile to a USB flash drive”.
• Once the Copy Network Settings wizard appears, insert the USB drive and click Next.
• The copying of settings will just take few seconds. Once copied, click Close.

To import the WiFi settings, plug in the USB drive to another computer, and double-click the setupSNK.exe file to install the same network profile on the other computer.

Increase Performance Using ReadyBoost

If your hard drive is a bit older and slowing down. Also, if you are in no mood to spend money on buying a new hard drive or a SSD, then your USB stick can be of assistance. You just need to enable ReadyBoost for the USB drive.

Please note that once ReadyBoost is enabled for a USB drive it will improve the disk read performance by acting as a hard drive cache.

In case you are using a hard disk with RPM equal to or above 7200 RPM then there will minimal performance boost. Also, if your primary hard disk is a Solid-State Drive then Windows will not let you use ReadyBoost.

• To enable ReadyBoost, open Windows Explorer and right-click on USB drive.
• From the drop-down menu select the Properties option.
• In the Properties window click on ReadyBoost tab and select the option Use this device.
• Click on Apply.

Please note that to use ReadyBoost the flash drives needs to have a minimum capacity of 256 MB.

Use as Portable Web Server

You will surely be surprised to know that you can change your USB drive into a portal web server by installing the application Server2Go. Also, the application Server2Go is completely free to download. Moreover, Server2Go contains complete server stack of WAMPP that is Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl.

Once you have installed Server2Go on the USB drive, plug in on any computer running Windows and launch the web server. This means now you have a portable server that you can take along with your anywhere.

Boot and Install an Operating System

Yeah, you read it right. A USB drive can be used to boot and install an operating system. Moreover, it can boot both Linux and Windows operating system.

There are various free to use software which you can use to make your USB drive bootable.

Apart from this you can even use your USB drive to install and run wide range of portable apps without installing them on your PC.

So, guys, that’s it from our side. Hope this article has made you aware that USB drive is not just for storing music, image and video files. If you know any other use of USB drive then please share in the comment box below.