Convert Pen Drive into RAM for Vista!

Can you convert your Pen Drive or Thumb Drive or USB Drive or whatever you call it into a Random Access Memory for your computer? The answer is NO, you can't! And YOU CAN, if you are using Vista.

You see there is one major Difference between RAM and a Flash Drive. They are built differently, for different purposes. They store information differently. RAM uses volatile memory, which requires power to maintain stored information.In other words, the information the computer stores on RAM is lost once you switch off the computer. Flash Drives on the other hand, like your Hard Drive, is non-volatile storage. What ever information you send to a Flash Drive is recorded so that you can access it later.

There is also another Memory for computer called Virtual Memory. Now you must have seen a temporary file stored on your computer, as you are working with a Word file or Excel sheet. Your computer stores the inactive part of the file you are working on and saves it temporarily on your Hard Drive so that your RAM can be freed up. This is exactly what Virtual Memory does. Virtual Memory uses your Hard Drive and gives an application the "impression that it has contiguous working memory (an address space), while in fact it may be physically fragmented and may even overflow on to disk storage."

Windows Vista takes it a step further. It enables you to use a new technology - ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost works using flash drives. Using ready boost, you can convert your Flash Drive into a cache. I am sure you have heard about cache, on your web browser. It is a place where the browser stores previous responses from a web server. In other words, things like cookies, pictures etc are stored on you Browser Cache so that the browser need not fetch it again as you move from one page to another when you are browsing.

Now ReadyBoost converts your USB Drive into a cache so that your computer can free the Virtual Memory and RAM. This makes your computer work faster than it actually does if you have not enabled ReadyBoost. Now how do you enable ReadyBoost?

• Make sure that your USB Drive is 1 GB or more. 
• Plug it into your computer.
• Scan it and fix it when your Vista prompts you to do so. 
• Go to My Computer.
• Right click on the USB Drive Icon and go to Properties.
• If your Flash Drive can be a ReadyBoost, the second last tab on your Properties Window will read so. [Some old Flash Drives may not be able to handle ReadyBoost]
• Click on the ReadyBoost Tab on Property Window
• Select "Use this device"
• Allocate Flash Drive space or in other words, tell your computer how much space it can use from your Flash Drive.
• Click OK
• Restart your computer and feel the difference

Please note that the space allocated for ReadyBoost on your Flash Drive cannot be used for other storage. In other words you can not save your files  if you have converted the whole Flash Drive space into ReadyBoost.  The trick is to use only half of your Flash drive as ReadyBoost and the other half for storing important files.

Portable Applications: Get essential applications on pendrive

All of us are used to running Applications and Programmes from your computer. What if you can run the same applications from a USB drive or pen drive or thumb drive or what ever you call that cute little thing that you use to store information? The thing is, you can.

Portable Applications are useful if you do not have a lap top and you are using public computers. They are useful if your computer is controlled by an Administrator and you cannot add or remove applications from your computer. You can store your log in data or anything else on the Portable Applications, take them any where and they will work the same way they worked when you had them on last time.

For example, if you use Google Chrome to browse and you have the habit of saving bookmarks and password on your browser, Portable Google Chrome will help you do that on any computer and still have all the data with you. This means, ton a great extend you don't have to worry about leaving your password on a Public PC.

Installing a Portable Application is easy. If you have a USB Flash drive, the installer will prompt you and help you install it on the drive. And these portable applications are not version specific. You can run it on XP, Vista or Windows 7. [I have not tested it on Linux or Ubuntu]

I would like to share with you a few portable applications that I use.

1. Portable Google Chrome
2. Portable Google Chrome Beta
3. Portable Mozilla Firefox
4. Portable MSN Messenger 
5. Portable Skype
6. Portable Thunderbird 
7. Portable Open Office
8. Portable Yahoo Messenger 
9. GnuCash Portable
10. Sumatra PDF Portable 
11. VLC Media Player Portable 
12. Cool Player Portable 

I use a 4 GB Pendrive. These 12 applications do not even take half of that pendrive. I have converted the rest of the space into a folder that will allow me to save important documents that I want to take along when I go somewhere.