Customizing a USB flash drive is nothing but making it more and more useful than it usually is my providing or rather enhancing the in built features like more data storage capacity and high data transmission rate. Once these flash drives are tailored to cater to the needs of the customers then it’s the job of the marketers to market the product and get them sold. Nowadays almost all every rival company is coming up with the same or even more enhanced technology simultaneously their competitor is already into.

So it’s technically not the matter of good technology products since every company is coming with the same as their peer is doing. It’s the matter of who comes first into the market and who grabs the more market share before his competitor does. Generally the company which enters first into the market grabs most of the market share since the percentage of people who wants to buy a product or a service will be fixed and the one who enters that particular product market grabs the greater or major share of the market and the one who enters lately will have to rest him self with the remaining customer or public who have been left by his fellow competitor.

So it’s not only the question of which technology is better or which is bad; it’s a question of who grabs what share of the market. Customizing USB flash drives is nothing but making it more user friendly or rather to be precise customizing USB is making it easy to handle in order to increase the comfort ability level with the usage of the USB flash drives. Making a product rich in technology or enhancing the existing features of technology rich product is nothing but increasing the technical usability of the product by increasing the number of applications of the product like initially the product or to be specific the technology (USB technology) is used only data store and transfer of data but today it’s being used for the biometric identification and physical identification of personnel in various organizations. So customizing a product has many dimensions to it and these (dimensions) are to be explored to the best possible way.

Burn an Ubuntu Live CD

If you have another computer, you can download and burn the Ubuntu Live CD using a very simple application called ImgBurn. Otherwise, you can bug one of your friends to help you burn a copy.

Just open up ImgBurn, and click the icon to “Write image file to disc”

Then click on the icon next to “Source”, pick the downloaded ISO file, stick a recordable CD into the drive, and click burn.

Now that you have the boot cd (which you should keep in a safe place, as it’s very useful), just stick it in the drive of the computer and boot from it. You should see an option to “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer”.

Once the system has started up, the first thing you want to do is choose Places \ Computer from the menu.

This should show you all the drives available in the system, including your Windows drive. In my case, that is the 52.4 GB volume.

You can try and double-click on the drive to open it… and if it immediately works then lucky you! Most of the time it’s going to give you an error saying “Unable to mount the volume”, because Windows didn’t shut it down cleanly.

Click the Details link so that you can see the full message, and leave this window open. You’ll see a “Choice 2″ in the message, which includes the commands to force Ubuntu to use that drive even though there’s something wrong.

What you’ll want to do is open a new Terminal from Applications \  Accessories \ Terminal on the top menu. Once you’ve done that, then you’ll want to type in a bunch of commands, which I’ll walk you through.

First, we’ll want to switch to “administrator” mode, which in Linux terms is known as “root”. The simplest way to do it is with this command:

sudo /bin/bash

Now we’ll need to create a directory that we’ll mount the drive on. The full explanation of mounting drives is a little complex, so just run this command:

mkdir /media/disk

Now comes the tricky part. You’ll need to type out a command very similar to this one, but you’ll need to replace /dev/sda1 with what you see in that message box we showed you above. This command tells Ubuntu to use the ntfs-3g driver, and force mount even if there is a problem.

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/disk -o force

If your drive is FAT32 instead of NTFS, then you can use the following command instead:

mount -t vfat -o umask=000 /dev/sda1 /media/disk

If you are having problems figuring out whether you have NTFS or FAT32, and you can’t figure out which /dev/whatever to use, then type in the following command at your prompt (make sure you already ran the command to run things as root)

fdisk -l

In the output you should see a lot more information about the available drives… you can see in this example that the filesystem type is NTFS and the device name is /dev/sda1.

At this point, you should be able to access your hard drive through the icon in Computer.

Note: If you have more than one drive in the computer, or more than one partition, they should show up separately in Computer. You should perform the same steps as above to open those drives up as well.

Backing Up to External USB

The absolute simplest thing to do at this point is to plug in an external USB drive, which should place an icon on the Ubuntu desktop, and most likely immediately pop up a nautilus window showing the contents of the drive.

Note: I plugged in a USB Flash drive for illustration… it would be better to plug in a full external USB drive so you’ll have more space for backups.

What Should I Backup?

If you aren’t extremely technical, you might be wondering what on earth you should be backing up… and that’s a very good question.

1) Best Method

If you have loads of empty space on your external drive or network share, you should simply backup the entire contents of the drive, and sort through it later. It’ll take a little longer, but at least that way you can be sure everything has been backed up.

2) Still Good

You should try and backup your entire user folder… on XP you’ll go to “Documents and Settings”, and on Vista you’ll go to “Users”, and you should see your username in the list:

You can simply copy this entire folder to your backup drive, which should contain your music, documents, bookmarks, and most of your important files.

Important Note: This will not backup your application files, and you should look around your drive and see if you’ve saved anything important somewhere else. This is especially true if you have more than one drive. Again, your best bet is to simply backup everything.

Backing Up to Network Share

If you would rather backup your drive to a network share on another computer, you can use the Places \ Connect to Server item on the menu.

Change the Service type menu to “Windows share”…

And then enter in the details for your network drive, with these being the required fields:

• Server: Computer Name
• Share: Shared Folder Name
• User Name: your username

Once you click the Connect button, you’ll be prompted to enter in your password. Typically you can leave Domain set to the default, but if you have a custom workgroup name you should enter that instead. I also chose the “Remember password until you logout” button just so I won’t have to enter the password again.

Once you click the Connect button you should have an icon on the desktop for your network share.

Now you can open up the network share, and if everything is setup correctly on the shared folder side of things, you can copy all of your files across the network using the instructions above on which files to choose.

At this point you should have a backup of your data. If you backed up to an external hard drive, you might want to consider also copying those files to another computer just in case, and if you copied across the network you could consider backing that up elsewhere as well.

Create the Bootable Flash Drive

You’ll first need to download the UNetbootin software and save it somewhere useful, since there’s no installation required, just double-click to run.

I chose to use an already downloaded ISO image of the Ubuntu installation cd, and then chose my flash drive, and clicked the OK button. Yes, this step is as simple as that.

The process will extract the files from the ISO image (or download them), copy them to the flash drive and then install the bootloader. Depending on what you are installing, this really doesn’t take very long.

Once the process is completed, you’ll be prompted to reboot… which you don’t necessarily have to do unless you want to test booting the flash drive on the same machine you are using.

Otherwise you can hit the Exit button.

Make Sure the Partition is Active

If you get a boot device error when you try and boot from the flash device, it could be that your partition is not marked as active. What we’ll do is use the command line diskpart utility to fix this… if you are in Vista open an administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking and choosing Run as Administrator.

Now you’ll need to run this command to figure out the number of your flash drive:

list disk

This will show you the list of drives, and you will use the disk number in the “select disk” command :

select disk 1
select partition 1
active

The “active” command will actually mark the current partition as active, which is why you need to select the disk and then the partition. At this point you should be done.

Download : UNetbootin

What’s the best way to breath life into an old, slow computer running Windows 2000 or less? Install Ubuntu! This past week I installed Ubuntu on an old Dell laptop that was slower than molasses with Windows 2000! You wouldn’t believe the difference with Ubuntu on it! It was like a brand new computer and it ran really fast.

So how do you install Linux Ubuntu on a computer/laptop that has no OS on it, no CD drive, and no BIOS support to boot from USB? Well, I’ll show you how. Please read through the instructions before you begin and prepare everything accordingly.

Things you’ll need:

• Second working computer with Windows OS with a floppy disk drive (you could also purchase a USB floppy disk drive)
• >= 2gb USB Flash Drive
• 1 Floppy Disk (you can find these at flea markets, jockey lots, goodwill, and on ebay)
• 1-2hrs time

Preparation:

• Download PLOP
• Download RawWrite (the first one for Windows source)
• Download the Ubuntu ISO file
• Download Linux Live USB Creator

Steps:

1. Unzip all zipped files and put them into a folder.

2. Insert the floppy disk and go to Computer. Right-click on the floppy drive and click FORMAT.

3. Use these floppy settings:

3. Open RawWrite and in IMAGE FILE area, locate the PLOP img. Then select write.
Note: If writing fails due to driver issues, go to the device manager and delete the drivers for your floppy drive. Then re-install them.

4. Plug in your USB flash drive and open up Linux Live USB Creator and use the following settings:

5. On the computer we’re installing Ubuntu on, insert the floppy with PLOP on it, reboot the computer and go into setup BIOS page  (F2,F10,ESC, depends on computer). Find the BOOT ORDER page and select both FLOPPY drive boot and HDD boot. Exit and save changes.

6. Your computer will boot to your floppy drive and the PLOP install menu will come up, follow the on screen instructions to install PLOP, then restart the computer and eject the floppy disk.

7. Your computer should boot into the PLOP main menu. Insert the USB flash drive that you used to create the live usb boot, then in the PLOP menu go down to USB and hit enter.

8. If all goes well, the Ubuntu install screen should come up. Follow the on screen instructions to install Ubuntu.

Not that hard, but took a while to figure out. Hopefully you’ll be able to do it without any issues.

]]> http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/another-ebay-gremlin-with-the-fraudsters-favourite-flash-drive-2/ Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:08:03 +0000 fightflashfraud http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/another-ebay-gremlin-with-the-fraudsters-favourite-flash-drive-2/ http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/another-ebay-fraudster-selling-fake-usb-flash-drives/ Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:16:47 +0000 fightflashfraud http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/another-ebay-fraudster-selling-fake-usb-flash-drives/ http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/we-dont-think-this-usb-flash-drive-on-ebay-was-made-by-sony/ Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:33:00 +0000 fightflashfraud http://fightflashfraud.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/we-dont-think-this-usb-flash-drive-on-ebay-was-made-by-sony/ http://jamespeter198.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/how-to-conduct-usb-flash-drive-data-recovery/ Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:27:42 +0000 jamespeter198 http://jamespeter198.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/how-to-conduct-usb-flash-drive-data-recovery/

USB Flash Drive is at work in everyday life we often use storage tool, at the same time, USB Flash Drive failures are also often plagued everyone’s a problem. USB Flash Drive data recovery how to do? The problem is the use of USB Flash Drive is very important.

USB Flash Drive Data Recovery The first step: USB Flash Drive copy data to an IMG image file

First, we run the USBoot, and then insert a China USB Flash Drive, USBoot will find the newly inserted USB Flash Drive, according to what order to USB Flash Drive data recovery operation of the preservation of work:

1, select the brand USB Flash Drive;

2, click on “Click here to select operating mode,” a pop-up menu, select “Backup to file” menu item;

3, and then click on “Start”;

4, when, USBOOT will pop up a “USB Flash Drive as a backup file” dialog box, enter a name for example: “backup_disk_u”, and then click Save.

5, please be patient USBOOT work until you are prompted to save the data successfully, during which ensure that USB Flash Drive will not tamper with the computer will not power off.

USB Flash Drive Data Recovery Step: Using WINHEX restore data
We had a successful first step in data recovery after the USB Flash Drive to a mirror IMG file, start WinHex, open backup_disk_u.img file, and then select “Tools” menu “Disk Tools” sub-menu, use the “File Recovery By Type …” function of the menu.

In the pop-up window, we went to leather USB Flash Drive data recovery file recovery operation:
1, “Select file Type (s):” yes you want to restore the file type, for example, you want to restore the file type is WORD, then select “MS OFFICE”; “Customize” is a custom file type, you can add without in the list of file types;

2, “Output folder:” is placed after the resumption of the file, we set “C: RecoveryDiskU”;

3, “Create subfolder for each file type” for each file type is the establishment of a subdirectory, we have chosen this function;

4, “Search at sector boundaries” is to select search mode, if the USB Flash Drive capacity is not large, you can opt for this mode; if USB Flash Drive of large capacity can choose “Search at cluster boundaries, if possible” mode, if you want a more precise , you can choose “Extensive byte-level search” byte search mode, this mode slower pace.

5, “Respect individual default size in file type definitions” file type in accordance with the definition of speculation is indeed the province of file size, we can select this feature.

6, Finally, click “OK”, wait for file recovery.

With a very utile hack, Google’s Chrome OS can be booted into a Windows, Mac or Linux box via a dedicated USB flash drive. A great idea.

From the link:

We’ve all had those moments at an airport waiting room, hotel lobby or coffee shop when we just want to yank out our laptops, hop onto the Web, check our e-mail and get offline. Try that with a Windows notebook and you’re talking about a few minutes to boot up, and maybe even longer to shut down. Your plane could be gone by then.

The solution? Arm yourself with a USB flash drive loaded with Google’s new Chromium OS. Boot your notebook with that when you’re pressed for time and you’ll be on and off the Web in less than a minute each way. Don’t want to boot with Chromium right now? Just remove the USB drive before your next boot-up. Your Windows notebook will forget all about Chromium and boot up normally.

As we reported earlier, a Twitter user Hexxeh has brewed a version of Chromium that boots a Windows, Linux or Mac computer from a USB drive. The latest build requires an empty USB flash drive (installing Chromium will wipe it) with a capacity of as little as 1GB.

Ever wondered what are these tiny chips? Confused by the names?
We are here to help you.

This article is about the various memory components available in the market for mobile phones.

Memory Stick

MS Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, launched by Sony in October 1998, and is also used in general to describe the whole family of Memory Sticks. This family includes the Memory Stick Pro, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity and faster file transfer speeds, and Memory Stick Duo, a small-form-factor version of the Memory Stick.

50.0 × 21.5 × 2.8 mm

Memory Stick Duo

MS Duo

31.0 × 20.0 × 1.6 mm

The Memory Stick Duo, which is slightly smaller than the competing Secure Digital format, was developed in response to Sony’s need for a smaller flash memory card for pocket-sized digital cameras and cell phones, as well as Sony’s PSP. Memory Stick Duos are available in all the same variants as their larger cousins (normal ones limited to 128 MB, larger Pro Sticks, with and without High Speed mode, with and without MagicGate support), and a simple adapter (often sold along with the Memory Stick Duo) allows a Duo to be used in any device that can accept their larger cousins.

Memory Stick Micro M2

15.0 × 12.5 × 1.2 mm

In a joint venture with SanDisk, Sony announced a new Memory Stick format on 30 September 2005. The new Memory Stick M2 (“micro”) measures 15 × 12.5 × 1.2 mm and could theoretically have 32GB in the future. Maximum transfer speed is 160MB/s. It will come with an adaptor, much like the Duo Sticks, to ensure compatibility with current Pro devices.

Multi Media Card

MMC

32 × 24 × 1.5 mm

The MMC card or MultiMediaCard was introduced in 1997 by SanDisk Corporation and Siemens AG. At that point the MMC card was the smallest memory card , about the size of a postage stamp, in the market based on flash memory technology. The MMC card is very similar to the Secure Digital Memory Card, actually the SD Memory Card is based on the MMC card. They have almost the same form factor the only differences are that the SD Memory Cards are slightly thicker and they have a write protection switch.

Since the MMC card had slow transfer speed, 2.5 MB/sec, in comparison to other memory cards, mostly compared to SD Memory Card, a new high performance version of the MMC card was introduced in 2005 by the name MMCplus. The MMCplus has today the highest, up to 52 MB/sec, theoretical data transfer speed in the whole memory card industry.

The MultiMediaCard Association announced that by the end of 2005 the secureMMC application will be available only for the MMCplus and MMCmobile memory cards. The secureMMC is a copyright protection application that features DRM, Digital Rights Management, and VPN, Virtual Private Network, capabilities.

Reduced Size Multi Media Card

RS-MMC

16 × 24 × 1.5 mm

MMCmobile (RS-MMC)

RS-MMC, Reduced Size MultiMediaCard, was introduced in 2003 by the MultiMediaCard Association (MMCA) as the second form factor memory card in the MultiMediaCard family. The RS-MMC is a smaller version of the standard MMC card, approximately half in size, and was specifically designed to be used by mobile phones and other small portable devices.

Dual Voltage Reduced Size Multi Media Card

DV RS-MMC

16 × 24 × 1.5 mm

In 2005 the Dual Voltage (DV) RS-MMC was introduced. It is basically the same card like the standard RS-MMC but operates with dual voltage, 1.8V and 3.3V, leading to lower power consumption which contributes to longer lasting battery life for the host devices. The DV RS-MMC and the RS-MMC are completely compatible with each other but since some mobile phones, mostly from Nokia, only operate with 1.8V cards the regular RS-MMC will not work. We recommend to always buy the Dual Voltage RS-MMC for being sure your memory card will function with the electronic device.

MMCmicro Card

MMCmicro

12 × 14 × 1.1 mm

The MMCmicro, formerly known as S-CARD introduced by Samsung, was adopted and introduced in 2005 by the MultiMediaCard Association (MMCA) as the third form factor memory card in the MultiMediaCard family. MMCmicro is the smallest, about the size of a fingernail, memory card in the MultiMediaCard family and among the smallest in the world. It was specifically designed for being used in mobile phones and other small portable devices.

The MMCmicro memory card is available with an adaptor, MMCplus. This makes it not only compatible to all MMC and MMCplus slots but also to all SD Memory Card slots. It is important to keep in mind that music stored on MultiMediaCards my not be able to play back when inserted into a SD Memory Card slot due to the copyright protection features supported by the SD slots.

Since the MMCmicro is the latest memory card to be developed and introduced to the market it is not that compatible to many mobile phones and electronic devices yet. Still it is expected to be one of the memory card formats that will dominate in the mobile phone industry among the frontrunner microSD and the under development Memory Stick Micro.

Secure Digital Card

SD

32 × 24 × 2.1 mm

The SD Memory Card or Secure Digital was introduced in 2001 by SanDisk Corporation, Matsushita (Panasonic) and Toshiba. The SD Memory Card was based on the MultiMediaCard, MMC, memory card standard and has almost the same form factor, the size of a postage stamp, the only differences are that the SD memory card is slightly thicker and has a write protection switch. Since MMC cards are thinner than SD Memory Cards they can be used in all SD Memory Card slots but not vice versa.

The SD Memory Card is today the most common used memory card. It can be found in most digital cameras, PDAs and in many other electronic devices. The SD Memory Card slots can be used for more than flash memory cards. The SDIO, Secure Digital In & Out, is the general name for the many expansion modules that can be found in the SD Memory Card’s form factor. SDIO modules can be inserted in the slot and be used for other functions like Bluetooth adapters, GPS receivers, digital cameras, TV tuners, etc

miniSD Card

miniSD

21.5 × 20 × 1.4 mm

The miniSD was introduced in 2003 by SanDisk Corporation in cooperation with Matsushita (Panasonic) and Toshiba. Later in that year the miniSD format was adapted by the SD Card Association as the second form factor memory card in the Secure Digital family. MiniSD is a smaller version of the SD memory Card format, about 60% smaller in volume, and offers the same benefits as the SD Memory Card expect of the writing protection switch.

MiniSD was designed specifically to be used in small portable electronic devices like digital cameras and mobile phones. But since all miniSD memory cards always come with a SD Memory Card adaptor, they are compatible to all SD Memory Card slots and thereby provide compatibility with the rapidly growing number of SD Memory Card compatible devices in the market.

MiniSD was the second, after SD Memory Card, memory card to be adapted by the SD Card Association, which today consists of three members. In 2005 the microSD was introduced as the third, and smallest, member of the Secure Digital family.

microSD Card also known as Transflash

µSD

11 × 15 × 1 mm

rashFlash, formerly known as T-Flash, was introduced by SanDisk Corporation in 2004 as the world’s smallest memory card, approximately the size of a fingernail. TransFlash was specifically designed for being used in mobile phones. Motorola was the first mobile phone manufacturer to adapt the TransFlash memory card standard.

In the 3rd quarter of 2005 TransFlash was adapted by the SD Card Association as the third form factor memory card in the Secure Digital family, after SD Memory Card and miniSD. After the adoption, TransFlash changed name to microSD. The microSD has exactly the same dimensions and specifications as the TransFlash and therefore both memory cards are completely compatible to each other.

Today the microSD is the most common used memory card in mobile phones and the SD Card Association’s objective is to make microSD a de facto memory card standard for all mobile phones. All TransFlash and microSD cards always come with a SD Memory Card adaptor, which makes them compatible to all SD Memory Card slots. The microSD is about 10% in size compared to SD Memory Card and about 30% compared to miniSD.

xD-Picture Card

xD

20 × 25 × 1.7 mm

The xD-Picture Card was introduced in 2002 by Fuji Film and Olympus as a replacement to the older SmartMedia Card. It is produced exclusively by Toshiba and can be found branded only under the name of Fuji Film and Olympus.

The xD-Picture Card format was developed to be used in digital cameras and is more or less only used in Fuji Film and Olympus digital cameras. Like SmartMedia Card, the xD-Picture Card does not incorporate a controller chip which allows it to have a small form factor but at the same time making it dependable to the host device’s controller chip.

For more information plz visit @  www.thecomponentshop.com

Article Courtsey:  ezinearticles.com

The Sony Micro-vault is a clickable, slim-line little device that is tough, durable and long lasting. And, this USB Flash Drive is washable.

The Sony Micro-Vault clicks to open or to close, just like a ballpoint pen with a single push. This enables a simple connection to the PC or Mac, and there is no need to worry about losing the cap. The prism LED illuminates to indicate when it’s in use. This allows you to easily check the status of the data transfer so you can use it with confidence. The Virtual Expander is originally designed for Micro Vault to automatically compress/decompress files moved to and from the device. It enables you to virtually store up to 3 times as much data. The Windows ReadyBoost function enables any specified amount of external memory to be added as the system cache, without expansion of memory of the computer, the use of the USB Flash Drive can stabilize system performance and improve program switching of active applications.

How do you accidentally wash the Sony Micro-vault so it still works? You must leave it in your clothing in the closed position; use cold-water wash cycle, a double loader washing machine and liquid laundry soap on full cycle. When finished, send it through the dry cycle for half an hour at medium-high temperature. The process of drying out the device is what makes it still work in the end. Emboss processing makes it easy to use the USB Flash Drive without leaving any fingerprints on the surface of the product. Clean the surface with a soft and dry cloth and do not use or apply harsh material or chemicals when cleaning. So sending your Flash Drive to the local Dry Cleaners in your clothes is not a good idea; it won’t make it through the cleaning process.

The length of time that a Micro-vault will last depends on how you take care of it; anything more than four washes and the USB flash drive stops working. This is a common practice among other users of USB Flash Drives.

Overall the Sony Micro-Vault 4GB Click USB Flash Drive is an excellent item to have if you are forgetful, but still, try to must remember to take it out of your pocket before you do the laundry.

SAVE $53.37 – Sandisk Cruzer Flashdrive, Micro, 8GB Memory, with U3 Technology (SDCZ68192A11) $12.62

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SanDisk Cruzer Micro 8GB USB flash drive Enhanced for ReadyBoost Store your digital photos, documents and music on this sleek USB flash drive that easily fits in your pocket for true portability. U3 Smart Technology for running applications directly from the drive, without those applications having to be installed on the computer. U3-compatible software provided free with Cruzer Micro includes the PC phone service Skype, SanDisks own CruzerSync for synchronizing files between a PC and the drive, the password manager program SignupShield Passwords from Protecteer, and a trial version of McAfee anti-virus software. More info »

Last updated: December 2, 2009, 2:15 pm

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