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#12823
I've done it before, and I imagine you might have too. You plug in your USB drive into the USB port and open up your work, spend ages working on it, save. Log out. Walk away.

...which is fine, if you're at home. But I'm a school student, and a number of times I have left my thumb drive in a school computer, or seen it happen to other people. Sometimes, you get it back. Other students are not so honest.

The problem is, if you lose the USB drive, you use the work on it as well, either temporarily or permanently. The logical thing to do would be to back it up, but we're not perfect, and I (and probably others) never do.

I have seen programs (although I've never used them) that display a warning when you power off your computer/put it into standby, telling you that your USB drive is still in the computer. However, there are two problems with this (for my intended use, anyway):

1. At school (I'm a student) we don't turn off the computers at the end of each class. Instead, we simply log off so the next person may use the computer. The warning would never appear.

2. From what I've seen, these programs are installed on the computer itself, rather than being stored on the USB drive. We have over 100 computers and you can never be sure which one you're going to be using. Clearly the program needs to be stored on the USB drive, NOT the computer you plug it into.

So, what I'm suggesting: A small program that runs from your USB drive and, when it is still plugged into the computer and you try to log off, it displays a notification something along the lines of, "Wait a minute, don't leave me behind!"

(If anybody know of something like this, PLEASE let me know!)

Reward: Free use of this program and clear instructions on how to make it work if it's not just a simple app.
#12939
I have created a very simple betaish USB Alert.

Download here : http://www.mediafire.com/?dnmig2ymz2n

If you put it in the autorun of your USB it should do excellently. If you do not or it does not autorun you MUST tell it too launch manually.

How it works:
1) Displays a message telling you it is active.
2) When requested to close, either by you or Windows it displays a message and asks you whether or not you want to continue shutting down. (or closing it, or removing drive {maybe} )
3) If yes it allows closing, if no it cancels it.

please let me know what you think....

For a marketable version i was thinking of doing some sort of registration system too, so if you lost it or it got stolen USB alert would connect to a web server and report every time it ran. So you would have a unique ID, and whenever it connected to Web it would document the Windows user login name and the IP it connected from. In the my school everyones user is like texample (example, the). So if you knew the login name you would know who had it!

Questions, Comments, Concerns, PLEASE email me at pllp5@adelphia.net
#13002
Hi Taiku! Thanks so much for that, apologies for taking so long to reply.

The alert doesn't come up on my home computer, but today I discovered that it works absolutely flawlessly on the school computers. :)

My only complaint would be the lack of customisability (for instance, being able to specify the message or the background) but that's not really important anyway. This definitely serves the purpose! Thanks!
#14545
Have you ever seen one of those retractable clip badges, which you hook on to your belt??? Someone should come up with a USB Thumb-drive with a re-tractable clip. That should solve your problem of not forgetting your thumb-drive. Easy and cheap.

Come to think of it, someone should come up with pen's/pencil's attached to re-tractable clips....
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