How in the Tech

Automatic USB Drive Desktop Shortcuts Creation

By Adam Myers ⋅ May 6, 2009 ⋅ Tags: File Management

One of the usability niceties that Linux, Ubuntu in my particular experience, got correct is the handling of non-fixed storage devices or locations. That sounds a bit technical but I’m simply referring to things like USB thumb drives or networked drives. In Ubuntu, when a USB disk drive is attached to the system the device is mounted automatically, not unlike Windows. Where the behavior differs is that Ubuntu will then create a shortcut on the Desktop which can be used for quick and easy access. It stands to reason that if you’ve just connected the thumbdrive you probably want to get at it soon thereafter. In Windows, the device is assigned a drive letter and you are forced to navigate through Explorer or My Computer to access it. If Explorer isn’t running, you are now a few clicks into a process just to get at the data. Previous versions of Windows would present an AutoRun dialog, but it’s a good security practice to disable this functionality, so much so that starting in Windows 7 it has become the default configuration.

Desk Drive is a free software application for Windows that mirrors the Ubuntu functionality described above. Introduced devices and media on the computer system are mounted and a desktop shortcut is created automatically. Desk Drive runs from the system tray and can be configured to provide the functionality to DVD’s, Thumbdrives or other removable media, or even network and ram drives. When the device is removed from the system the created shortcut is then also removed.

Unfortunately, Desk Drive requires the Microsoft .Net Framework which means the software is a bit heavy with it’s memory usage – to the tune of 15MB in my usage. Is that too much for what the software provides? I guess that depends on how often removable devices are used and how annoyed you are in trying to find the device amongst many in Windows Explorer.