IT Admin

If you’re like me, your USB key should come with its own flame retardant coating. That’s because I tend to use my little four-gigabyte device to great excess on a near-daily basis. It’s an easy fix for transferring files from a desktop PC to a laptop, and it’s great for carrying batches of files I need to access (especially if I’m without an Internet connection, making Dropbox useless). If I’m heading over to a friend’s house, I can slap a movie on the drive for us to watch on an attached PC or home theater device. I can throw down a game or two if I’m going to be travelling and don’t feel like reading about overpriced devices that will pet my cat for me. USB keys are more than just a geek’s trusty friends. They’re uber-tools in their own right.

Application suites for USB keys are another popular way of extending the functionality of your desktop into the portable realm. Install these batches of software and you can take your favorite programs along with you wherever you go–perfect for when you’re using a computer that isn’t yours, yet you would prefer to be able to access to a better range of apps than Windows’ default programs. Better still, you can stick these batches of applications on smaller USB keys to extend the life of these sub-gigabyte devices. The storage might stink, but the functionality will rule.

PortableApps

What it does: The alpha and omega of portable application suites is conveniently called, “PortableApps.” Were there any software suites on this list that you would have already heard of prior to this article, this would be the one. And there’s a good reason why. PortableApps packs a great deal of functionality into its three software bundles, which take up space ranging from 1.3MB to 355MB. You get the standard suite of Mozilla applications, a portable antivirus scanner, games, the OpenOffice suite, and more! Check out the full list here.

Download it here!

Lupo PenSuite

What it does: If you thought PortableApps was packed, just wait. The three versions of Lupo PenSuite range from 3MB to 300MB in space. The latter includes a more than 200 apps themed around nine main categories: Internet, Multimedia, Graphics, System, Security, Office, Utility, Extra, and Games. Highlights included a portable version of uTorrent; more audio editing and CD ripping/burning apps then you ever thought you needed; Gimp for photo editing; CPU-Z and JkDefrag Plus for system information and drive cleaning; CCleaner for keeping your system clutter-free; and Notepad++ for adding colorful syntax to your file editing. I tried to say all of those in one breath, but failed. Check out the full list of apps here.

Download it here!

LiberKey

What it does: Although LiberKey doesn’t stand out against its peers, like Lupo PenSuite, as a result of its applications, one of the suite’s cooler features is that it allows for updates to any of its applications via a simple utility. It’s like having a customized edition of the Filehippo version tracker right there on your USB key. This process isn’t always as simple with the other application suites, nor would I imagine that you would ever want to go through the official Web sites of hundreds of applications just to find new versions. LiberKey takes care of that all for you so you can get back to, you know, using the applications you downloaded. Fancy concept, that.

Download it here!

MyApps

What it does: Tired of grabbing application suites in which you only end up using five percent of the listed programs? Think you can do better than your average suite developer when it comes to picking and choosing the top apps that should go in a bundle? Alright, tough person. Hit up the Regional Support Centre Scotland North & East’s official Web site and create your own customized MyApps listing. Pick the programs you want to have on your key, and the site will automatically create the single install file for you. It’s as easy as that (or, if you’re stubborn, grab one of the three pre-built packages: AccessApps, LearnApps, or TeachApps)

Download it here!

Mojopac

What it does: I lied. Mojopac isn’t an application suite so much as it is an entire virtualized operating system–sort-of. Load this onto your USB key and you can boot into a separate Windows environment on any Windows XP-based PC. While the program ties into existing files on the system’s hard drive to create this second operating system, the contents of said OS remain yours to install programs into, modify, and tweak. When you’re done, shut down your personalized OS and it’s as if you were never sitting at the attached PC to begin with. Neat, huh?

Download it here!

Time = 1 hour

What you need:

• 4GB USB key
  $10, www.newegg.com
• WinRAR
  Free Evaluation Copy, www.rarlab.com
• Windows 7 Beta ISO
  Free, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

Note: This guide will only work within Windows Vista.

1.    Format Your USB Key

Plug in your USB key and back up any existing data stored on it. You’ll need to format the key before you can make it a bootable device.

Open up a Command Prompt as an Administrator. You can do this by finding the cmd.exe in yoru Windows/System32 folder, right-clicking the executable, and selecting “Run as Administrator”. Alternatively, type CMD in the Start Menu search field and activate the Command Prompt using Ctrl + Shift + Enter.

You should be under c:\Windows\system32 (assuming your Vista partition is the C drive). Type “diskpart” in the command line to enter the Disk Partition command line tool, which lets you format and create partitions on active disks.

Type “list disk” to reveal a list of all your active disks, each of which is associated with a number. Make a note of which one is your USB key, based on the capacity. In our screenshot below, our USB drive is Disk 6 (8GB).

Next, type the following commands, one at a time:

Select Disk # (Where # is the number of your USB disk. We typed “Select Disk 6”)

Clean (removes any existing partitions from the USB disk, including any hidden sectors)

Create Partition Primary (Creates a new primary partition with default parameters)

Select Partition 1 (Focus on the newly created partition)

Active (Sets the in-focus partition to active, informing the disk firmware that this is a valid system partition)

Format FS=NTFS (Formats the partition with the NTFS file system. This may take several minutes to complete, depending on the size of your USB key.)

Assign (Gives the USB drive a Windows volume and next available drive letter, which you should write down. In our case, drive “L” was assigned.)

Exit (Quits the DiskPart tool)

2.    Turn the USB Key into a Bootable Device

Download and Install winRAR, which lets extract files from the install DVD image without burning or mounting it first. Open the utility and navigate to the direction where you downloaded your Windows 7 Beta ISO. Double click the ISO file to examine its contents. Extract all of the files here to a folder on your Desktop. We put the ISO contents in a folder named “Windows 7 Beta”

Go back to your command prompt, running it as an Administrator. Using the “CD” command, find your way to the folder where you extracted the ISO files. Your command line path should look something like “C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\Desktop\Windows 7 Beta\”.

Type the following commands:

CD Boot (This gets you into the “boot” directory)

Bootsect.exe /nt60 L: (where ‘L’ is the drive letter assigned to your USB key from the previous step)

Bootsect infuses boot manager compatible code into your USB key to make it a bootable device.

IMPORTANT: If you’re currently running Windows Vista 32-bit, Bootsect will only work if you downloaded the 32-bit ISO for Windows 7 Beta. The Bootsect executable from the 64-bit version of the beta will not run in 32-bit Vista.

3.    Load the USB Key Up with the Install Files

Copy all of the extracted ISO files into the USB drive. You don’t need to do this from the command prompt. Just drag and drop the files from the “Windows 7 Beta” folder into the drive using Windows Explorer.

Your USB key is now all ready to go! Plug it into your target system and make sure you enter the BIOS (typically with F2 or F12) to temporarily change the boot order to allow booting from the USB key before your primary hard drive or optical drive. On the next restart, your system should automatically begin speedily loading setup files off of the USB key and entering Windows 7 installation.