USB thumb drives are quite the handy device – they are cheap and small yet spacious in their capacity. Unfortunately, their size can also be a hindrance. If you are a heavy user of thumb drives you’ve left your fair share of devices behind and attached to the PC you are working on. If you are lucky, the device is returned to you but quite likely the USB drive is gone for good. As a user of multiple computers this is bound to happen to you. Worse, it’s also doesn’t appear to be a cause and effect consequence of any lasting nature. If you’ve done it once, you are likely to do it again!

USB Alert can aid in solving our forgetfulness when it comes to accidentally jettisoning our thumb drives. The free utility, while running from the system tray, will provide an audible alert as well as a pop-up window when your lock or shutdown a PC while a USB storage device is attached.

The application has a couple of installation methods available. You can either have the application launch on login from the Start up folder or the it can be installed and launched from autorun directly off the USB drive. The latter option is ideal if you are routinely using random computers or otherwise systems you don’t have direct access to to install the software in the first place. The former is ideal for users who have concerns of leveraging the autorun functionality on USB thumb drives – an otherwise security no-no.

From the system tray icon, USB Alert displays all the devices it is currently monitoring. You can even eject or browse the device directly from the utility.

When the user attempts to lock or shutdown the PC while the device is still present a dialog will provide a friendly reminder to remove your thumb drive.

Download USB Alert