Creative ways to reuse old USB drives you have forgotten in the drawer
Thinking of throwing away your USB drive because it's old? Whether it has little storage memory or you just don't know what to do with your flash drive, there's no reason to throw it away.
There are many ways to take advantage of these accessories on your Windows, Linux or macOS PC, so that they don't become completely obsolete, since with a space of just 4 GB or more it is possible to do a wide variety of things.
If you want to discover some of the functions or applications that you can use with your USB drive so that it doesn't stay in a drawer without any use, then you should consider some of the recommendations in this article.
Use Google Chrome as a portable application
Use a backup antivirus
Install the portable version of Linux
Turn your USB drive into a key to unlock your PC
Turn it into a recovery drive
Save your favorite music
Use Google Chrome as a portable application
Google Chrome is a lightweight and handy browser, so you can easily install it on your USB drive to take it with you wherever you go.
It's a great idea to have an account and data already set up from the program. This way, you'll quickly access a page from any site with Internet.
You could also add special bookmarks to use Chrome for different things, such as playing thousands of free online games, for example.
Use a backup antivirus
Having an antivirus on your computer is essential to reduce the chances of being affected by malware or other cyberattacks.
For these cases, installing the portable versions of these tools can be very useful. The reason why it is recommended is because there are viruses nowadays that are capable of reproducing and becoming severe, preventing you from acting with the installed programs.
Therefore, having an antivirus on your pendrive would be a way to solve things without being affected by the malicious entities that have infected the OS.
Install the portable version of Linux
If what you need is to have an additional operating system without having to use a virtual machine, your drive can make it possible, as long as it has at least 6GB of storage.
The idea is to install Linux on the pendrive with one of the most secure distributions, such as Kali or Tails OS.
This way, you can start it on any PC to do any task without leaving information or trace about what you have done, becoming one of the most recommended security options.
Turn your USB drive into a key to unlock your PC
Thinking of secure passwords is a bit more complicated than it seems and if you don't usually remember them easily or want to save yourself the trouble of updating them every so often, you'll probably be interested in using your USB drive as a security key.
Yes, there are already many ways to configure your drive to become a protection tool for Windows.
At the same time, there are many platforms that incorporate the possibility of generating keys to lock and unlock accounts. Although the process may vary, the instructions are quite simple and similar.
Turn it into a recovery drive
Do you have a USB drive of 16 GB or more? Then one of the best uses you can give it is to turn it into an operating system recovery drive.
Both Windows, Linux and macOS offer recovery options with backup copies of all the information you have stored.
In the event of an emergency and you lose everything or need to do an unexpected factory reset, you will have the pendrive as an option to restore to the save point.
Save your favorite music
Any device of this type can be used to store your favorite song lists in MP3 format and even videos or movies in MP4.
By organizing everything by folders, you will have a space full of songs to listen to at any time, since most current devices have this playback option.
Each of these recommendations will surely give a lot of life to your USB drive so that you do not have to get rid of it. So just try some of these methods to take advantage of it.