Imagine carrying your favorite software, settings, profiles and data on a device that can fit your key chain. It is possible with portable software - computer programs that can be carried around with you on portable device and used on any Windows computer. When your flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other device is plugged in, you have access to your favorite software and personal data just as you would do on your own PC. You can work, play a game, message friends, send email, edit photos and more - all without worrying if applications are installed on the computer. Not all software can be portable. It needs to comply with the following requirements.

Copying such program to a different computer should not alter system registry of that computer or add any extra files to system folders. Moving the program from one folder to another neither make system unstable, nor render the program unable to run correctly. Moving all files and folders of the program to a different location should preserve your settings. Deleting the program folder guarantees that the program data will be completely removed.

There are two major media types used for the portable software: à portable hard drive device and a flash drive. The main advantage of a hard drive is its low cost per megabyte, so a portable 20 Gb hard drive can cost the same as 2Gb flash one. However, à portable hard drive has moving parts, and a good bump or drop from a few feet can damage it. A flash drive uses flash memory, which means that information is stored in a memory circuit, and there are no moving parts in it. You can drop it and be sure it would be fine. Also it is usually much smaller than a hard drive. However, keep in mind that flash memory can sustain only a limited number of write and erase cycles before failure. Thus, an active everyday usage of the flash memory can result in a card lifetime of 1-2 years. If your flash drive is 1- or 2-years old, consider buying a new one. Also, there are some programs configured to place temporary or intermediate files in memory rather than store them temporarily on the flash drive, that reduce the flash memory usage.

Recently a new type of flash drives appeared, that is specially designed for the portable software. They are coming preinstalled with the Launchpad which emulates the Windows OS start menu, and controls program installation and two partitions - one for the launch menu, and one for the programs and data. While such portable drive is highly attractive, one of the downsides of it is that most of the software for it is commercial. The best way to fill your portable drive with the best tools is to look for a portable versions of your favorite software. Everyone has its own tastes in making their collection. The following 17 hand-picked freeware tools are a pretty common choice: http://www.handyrecovery.com/usb-flash-drive.html

Yuri Maslikov
http://www.softlogica.com/