My Favorite USB Tools

  As any self-respecting IT pro, I carry a USB drive around with me almost constantly, and I have many tools on there that I rely on regularly.  One thing I see and hear a lot from colleges are what tools should they have available on a USB?  Well, here is a list of the software I use on a regular basis.

Hiren's Boot CD [link]

   This is the first tool I setup on my USB drive.  Well.. it's first because it basically has to be.  To get Hiren's on a USB drive, it means formatting it and setting it up for a computer to recognize it as a boot medium (link).  I use Hiren's because it has a ton of tools I can use to fix a computer.  The tools I use most often is Parted Magic and the Offline Password tool.  There are a bunch more, but those are the ones I use most often.  Also, you can use quite a few of Hiren's tools on Windows as well.  You can access those tools at: \HBCD\HBCDMenu.exe

KeePass [link]

   My go to for password management.  This was the first software I came across for password management (about six years ago now) and haven't had any interest in changing.  I have a copy of my database on my home computer and carry it around on my USB.  That way, no matter where I am, I can get access to whatever site I need to.  I also use this to help manage password for any company specific sites too, of course the database for that stays at work and on a server so it's backed up.

Notepad++ [link]

   I got started with Notepadd++ when I did a lot of manual HTML development for websites.  With it's support for a ton of languages, it offers the ever-so-handy syntax highlighting.  While I don't do much manual HTML development, I still use it to read a lot of documents as well as work with a lot of server files for my Minecraft servers.  It's lightweight, offers a lot of plugins to expand it's features, and is just so damn handy on a USB.

BAT to EXE Converter [link]

   While I don't use this as much as I used to, I wanted to include it because it is such a handy tool and can solve some problems that you may have with scripting.  When I was younger, I wanted to develop a lot of custom scripts to handle a lot of common tasks.  A lot of that was VBS, but I found that in some cases, I couldn't call VBS directly, I had to do it with a Batch file.  Sometimes, I wanted to give my scripts a custom icon or make it hidden to the users.  This software will allow that.  You can even combine a bunch of scripts into one file to make it easy to move around.

7 Zip [link]

   Why someone still uses WinRAR, I have no idea as 7zip does everything it can do and more... all without bugging you to buy it!  I have this on my USB to work with archives as well as a file explorer.  While I don't use it as a file explorer much, it is a reliable one to use just in case.  As an archiver, it's brilliant.  It's even able to make encrypted and password protected archives.

RocketDock [link]

   Another obscure piece of software, but one I've used a long time.  While there are other options for a USB launcher, I like RocketDock as it's completely customizable and straightforward.  RocketDock can be expanded with a bunch of plugins developed by it's community and a lot of custom fancy scripts or special Windows commands.  The who look can be anything you want it to be like the OSX dock or like the one I use below.

   That is it for this list, as these are either the most common tools I use, or ones that are a bit obscure that most don't know about.  If you'd like me to continue this and talk about more of the tools I use, let me know in the comments below!

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About Jimmy R. Tassin

Jimmy Tassin is the IT Manager of Midwest Regional Bank and has been involved with the Technology field for over thirteen years. His two hobbies are overseeing the daily operations of OmniKraft, a Minecraft server community, and writing at Goblinbyte.com.