Flash memory on a USB stick is easy enough to understand concerning the way it works. The memory is a type of EEPROM and non-volatile, which is the reason it doesn’t require a battery or external power source to retain the information stored on it. But if you ever asked the question, "Is there a difference between brands?", the answer is yes and...

When most people think of apps that run from the USB stick alone, they think of PortableApps. However there is another choice, and it’s called LiberKey. I will admit up front that this doesn’t look as good as PortableApps does, however I will say it runs faster and is easier to get to the apps you want quicker. The first notable difference is that...

When formatting a USB stick in Windows (something many of us do from time to time), in XP you usually only have two file system options, FAT or FAT32. "FAT", by the way, means "File Allocation Table". If you were wondering which to pick, the answer is FAT32 because it overcomes certain limitations of FAT. However if you have a USB stick...

In previous articles and videos I’ve discussed how to get a "Live" mode (i.e. as if your computer were booting from CD) of Linux on a USB stick. Some people think this is cool but would rather have a full CD-sized distribution installation instead. And when I said "CD-sized" I’m referring to distributions that take up the entire...

This is a follow-up article to this one showing how simple it is to use Unetbootin to install a Linux distribution to your USB stick. Bear in mind that Unetbootin has the choice of many different distros to choose from. Even if you have only have an older 128MB stick, you still could use Damn Small Linux on it! See video below for...

Over the weekend I was at the Wal-Mart picking up a few things and noticed over in the electronics dept. they had 2GB Sandisk USB sticks on sale. $12.88 a piece. Cheap enough as far as I’m concerned so I bought one. I had 2 purposes for buying the stick.It’s better than the 512MB I have (one can never have too much space). I wanted to try out a...

Sick of burning CDs of Linux distributions every time you want to try out a new one? Don’t worry, you can reuse your USB stick as many times as you like and burn bootable ISOs to it. Is there an easy way to do this? Yes. It’s actually pretty easy. But before I tell you how there’s a small list of things you need to do first:You need a USB...