How in the Tech

Never forget to remove your thumb drive with Pen Drive Reminder

By Adam Myers ⋅ September 24, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Windows

Thumb drives are everywhere. The ability to carry around a couple gigabytes of portable and fast storage is useful in any number of ways. Thumb drives have become so popular and common place that it is possible to carry around a collection of applications – PortableApps.com – that run directly from the USB memory stick. This allows you to effectively and efficiently work from any computer that has a USB port – your data and applications follow you around. It’s cloud computing without the cloud!

As our reliance on memory sticks increases so does the pain we feel when we must suffice without. Thumb drives are small by design but that lends themselves to being lost or otherwise misplaced. One of the common occurrences is leaving the thumb drive behind because you forgot to remove it from the computer when you were finished. Not only are you out a couple bucks but you may have left some sensitive information on the thumb drive now residing in the public library. Not a pleasant thought at all!

Pen Drive Reminder is a useful utility to have installed on your thumb drive whose lone purpose to aid in remembering to take your memory stick with you once finished. Once installed, Pen Drive Reminder has three types of reminders configurable:

• Silent. A tray notification triggers when you attempt to log off, shutdown, or restart the PC with your thumb drive attached.
• Alarm. A tray notification triggers at the configured time to remind you to eject your drive.
• Countdown. A tray notification triggers after a configurable amount of time has passed.

Pen Drive Reminder can also be configured to autorun on the insert of the USB thumb drive. Pretty handy indeed!