The problem here is that it is very likely that someone else will eventually spot the drive or key and take it with them.

Free USB Guard is a program that checks for connected USB devices on system power changes. If devices are found, the user will be notified to avoid the aforementioned scenarios. The application is a portable software. Just unpack it, for instance on the USB drive or stick to run it from there whenever you are working on systems that are not your own.

Whenever you change a power state, for instance by selecting to shut down or log off, you are reminded by the program that USB devices are still connected to the system.

The program for the most part sits quietly in the Windows system tray. It displays a list of all USB drives that it currently monitors. This list is automatically updated whenever a new device is connected to the PC that is monitored by the application.

The program will autostart with Windows unless you uncheck the options in the program’s right-click context menu. Free USB Guard can monitor external hard drives as well. A list of available drives is displayed, including internal drives, which can be added to the program’s monitoring. You basically get the same warning message if you change the power state then.

Free USB Guard is not the only program that can do that. In How To Protect USB Sticks And The Data On Them I mentioned the program USB Stick Watcher which basically can do the same. The program comes with additional functionality, including sound alerts.

Free USB Guard is available for download at the developer website. The program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Here is the link to download USB Disk Ejector: http://quick.mixnmojo.com/usb-disk-ejector

To stay on the safe side, always perform a security scan on internet downloads before opening them.

This is a .zip file, so you will open the application from your .zip software. It is not necessary to open the HTML document unless you simply want to do so. Double click the application.

After opening the application, it should look like this:

For this demonstration, we will focus on removing a compact Flash drive. As you scroll down the list of options, you will see that you can also work with xD, SD/MMC, MS/MS, Pro/HG, and Micro SD drives as well. You can use the utility without creating a hotkey or shortcut by highlighting the drive and pressing enter or double-clicking it.

In this example, the user wants to eject a USB Flash Memory stick from drive (K:). Highlight the drive then press enter and it is done.

To operate this from the keyboard, you can use the utility from a command line. This will allow you to pass parameters and identify which drive to eject.

Begin by passing in the /? Parameter. This will show the help dialog:

• /? Displays this message
• /SILENT Stops balloon messages from appearing when the program is run in GUI mode
• /SHOWEJECT Shows the standard now safe to remove message when a drive is ejected. This message is disabled by default
• /REMOVETHIS Ejects the drive that the program is running from. Eg if the program is run from a usb stick on drive G, then drive G would be ejected
• /REMOVELETTER Ejects the specified drive letter
• /REMOVENAME Ejects the drive with the specified name. Partial name matching is possible if a wildcard (*) is used. Eg /REMOVENAME *SANDISK would eject a drive that had sandisk in its name

These are the command line options. Test them out. The Drive in this example is Drive (K:), so the syntax used in the command line is as follows:

usb_disk_eject /removeletter K

The command line used depends on the name of the disk sometimes, so you may need to include variations of the disk name in the command line or you will receive error messages.

Creating a Shortcut

Right-click on the desktop and then select New > Shortcut. In this location box, enter the full pathway for the USB Disk Eject application file.

Click Next and assign a name to the shortcut and this will create an icon that can be kept on the desktop for easy ejection of a given drive. You can do this with any USB drive.

To create a Hotkey to the Shortcut: Right-click on the icon and open Properties. You can do this with any Shortcut, by the way. It all works the same.

Click Apply and it is done. Here, F12 is used as the hotkey, but you may choose any key or combination of keys. In Windows Vista, you can add the shortcut to the quick launch bar and use the built-in hotkey option.

It is a confusing error message, considering that the device is a hard drive, and not a drive where a disk can be inserted. There are however a few things that users can do to troubleshoot the issue.

Drive Letter Conflict

A drive letter conflict occurs if the disk that is affected by the error is mapped to a reserved drive letter. That’s probably the easiest to resolve, as it can be resolved by changing the drive letter of the affected drive.

• Type computer management in the start search box and hit Enter. You can alternatively click on the Start Menu orb, then Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Computer Management. Please note that the path is valid for Windows 7, and may differ for other operating systems.
• Click Disk Management.
• Right-click the partition, logical drive, or volume that you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
• Click the removable drive, click Change, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK. Make sure you map a drive letter that is not in use, preferably x,y,z. If that works you can still change it to another drive letter easily.

You may also want to try plugging it into another free port if available.

Software

Transcend JetFlash Online Recovery is a free software program to fix the insert a disk into drive error in Windows. Please note that this drive has been designed for Trascend removable drives. It appears to be working with other drives as well, but there is no guarantee for that. Before you use the software, try finding a comparable software from your device manufacturer. Many happen to have recovery software for this problem available. You may also want to consider contacting the manufacturer’s support first.

Visit the site and download the RecoverISP tool. Please note that you need to supply an email address before you can download the software. The program is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

Once downloaded plug the removable drive in the computer and start RecoverISP. It is a portable tool that requires no installation. The software scans the removable drive and displays that the ISP is ok or broken.

Press the OK button. If broken was shown a new window appears. A pulldown menu is available in that window. Make sure the right device is selected before starting the repair with a click on the Start Fix button.

Press ok on the next screen to confirm the procedure. The program displays a report in the end detailing whether the fix was successful or not.

Unplug your drive, and plug it in again to see if the fix has resolved the issue. If it did, the error please insert a disk into drive should not appear anymore when accessing the drive in Windows Explorer. The software has been designed to preserve the data on the removable drive. Still, it may be a good idea to backup the data before you proceed with the repairs.

Super Stick Recovery Tool

This tool is not available anymore on a company website. I have downloaded it from Megaupload and checked it at Virustotal. No antivirus engine used at the site reported a hit. I have uploaded the program to Ghacks for a more reliable hosting option. Download Super Stick Recovery Tool 1.0.2.19 from this location and unpack it once it has been downloaded. Please note that this tool will erase all data on the drive, use it as a last resort or if no or only unimportant data is on the drive.

Run the tool as administrator while the removable drive is plugged in. It may take a few minutes before the process completes.

Formatting, Partitioning

Formatting the drive may or may not work depending on the type of error. Some users may get the error “There is no disk in drive. Insert a disk, and then try again.” when trying to format the drive. That’s usually the case if you look at the drive properties and notice that it reports a capacity of 0 Megabytes (in Device Manager > Disk Drives > Right-click, properties > Volumes.

Use GreyGrue has another solution:

Open Command Prompt with admin rights.
*Type cmd in Start menu search box and hit Ctrl+ Shift+ Enter.
Or
*Go to Start menu > All programs > Accessories, right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
As I was on an Admin account already I just hit Start key + R. Then type in cmd.

First type DISKPART and hit enter. You will see a text block saying version number. Takes a second depending on number of drives.

Next type LIST DISK command and note down the Disk number of your USB flash drive. it will be listed as disk 0, disk 1, and so on. My thumb drive was Disk 4 with my other four drives before it. You can also see the total size as well as free space for each drive. Here my Thumb drive was ** bytes, 0 Bytes free. While the windows manager displayed a 0 bytes, 0 free.

Replace the drive number “#” with the correct drive number for the following commands.

SELECT DISK #

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

(here you put the file type you wish to format in to. NTFS, FAT32, FAT16. FAT32 is standard.)

FORMAT FS=NTFS

(Format process will take a few seconds)

ASSIGN

EXIT

Verdict

The Please Insert A Disk Into Drive error can have numerous causes and symptoms. That makes the troubleshooting and fixing problematic. As a rule of thumb: If no data is on the drive, or only unimportant data, then use the the formatting / erasing / partitioning option. If important data is on the drive, contact the drive manufacturer first, they sometimes have tools that they send out on request only.

Have you encountered this error message before? How did you fix the issue on your PC?

Now there are loads of tools to use for this purpose. I have already covered the Unetbootin tool in my article “Install Linux on a USB drive with Unetbootin.” This time around we are going to do the same trick with a tool that comes pre-installed on any modern Ubuntu distribution. It’s all graphical interface and all easy going.

What you will need

• A USB drive with at least 700 MB in size.
• Either an ISO image or the Ubuntu Live CD

And a little bit of time. If you don’t have either the ISO image or the CD you can just download a fresh copy from the Ubuntu site.

Once you have everything you need, you are ready to go.

Starting the tool

Figure 1

You will find the USB creator in the Administration sub-menu of the System menu on the GNOME desktop. The entry you are looking for is called “USB Startup Disk Creator”. Click that to open up the main window (see Figure 1).

As you can see (in Figure 1) there is neither an image or a CD listed. You either have to insert your Ubuntu CD or, if you’re using a downloaded image, click the Other button and navigate to where you’ve saed your image file.

When you insert your CD it will be automatically detected by the system and listed in the USB Startup Disk window. When this happens everything that is greyed out in Figure 1 will be at your service.

You will notice the only option available is for saving documents and settings. If your USB drive has enough extra space you can designate a portion of that drive for this purpose. With this feature you can effectively have a portable version of Linux that is far more than just a “startup disk”.

Creating the disk

Figure 2

When you have selected your image to use and configured your free space you are ready to go. Click the Make Startup Disk button and the main windo will be dismissed. During the creation process you will see a progress window (see Figure 2) that will let you know how much is done and what is happening. The phases of this creation are:

• Copying Files
• Creating persistence file
• Making persistence file system

Once all three phases are complete you will get a dialog window telling you installation is complete and you can now reboot your machine with the USB drive. Of course when you boot a machine with this device it has to be able to boot from a USB device. Most modern machine can do that so it shouldn’t be an issue.

Final thoughts

As far as tools of this nature, the Ubuntu USB disk creator tool is one of the easiest and most reliable. It’s not the most flexible; but for what it does, you can’t beat it. If you’re looking to have a portable Ubuntu distribution you can carry with you, make use of this user-friendly tool.

Computer vaccination referring to disabling autorun completely from removable media like usb flash drives or optical drives like CDs or DVD drives. To enable the protection of the computer system from programs that are auto-executed if usb flash drives or CDs or DVDs are inserted into the computer drives.

A click on vaccinate computer will immediately disable autorun on the computer system. The USB drive vaccination option on the other hand will disable autorun from selected usb flash drives. The drives have to be connected to the computer system before the computer can be protected. Every connected usb flash drive will be listed in a pulldown menu. A click on vaccinate usb will prevent autorun from being executed from that usb flash drive.

It should be noted that it is not possible to undo the autorun protection of a selected usb flash drive in the computer system using the security software. Another limitation is that it will only work on usb flash drives that have been formatted with the FAT or FAT32 file system.

Panda Research USB Vaccine increases the security of a computer system in regards to usb flash drives and other media with autorun capabilities. The security software has been tested under Windows Vista, Windows XP and even Windows 2000. It will work on all

Users who want to create multiple partitions need a file called Hitachi Microdrive which contains the new driver that we are going to modify first and install afterwards. Unpack the package to a new directory on the hard drive. The first step is to find out the exact name of the USB stick that we want to use that way. The information can be found in the Windows Registry. Pressing [Windows R], typing [regedit] and hitting [Enter] will load the Registry editor.

The information are located in subkeys of the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\USBSTOR. The name of the USB stick can be found by clicking on the [+] sign in front of the key. All USB devices should be listed there. The name of the USB stick can be copied by left-clicking the subkey, right-clicking afterwards and selecting Copy Key Name from the context menu.

The key needs to be modified because it contains the full path. The best way to do that is to paste the contents into a text editor and remove all chars before Disk&Ven.

Now that this is done we need to copy the part that is left into the Windows Clipboard again by selecting the text and pressing [CTRL C]

The driver information needs to be edited in the next step before the new drivers for the USB stick are installed. Load the file cfadisk.inf in an text editor and locate the [cfadisk_device] section.

Replace the chars IDE\DiskIBM-DSCM-11000__________________________SC2IC801 in the first line with the name of the USB stick that you are going to use. Remove every other line in the category so that only the line with our modified USB stick name is shown in there.

The driver is now prepared and can be installed for the USB stick. Open the Windows Control Panel, the System category and there the Hardware tab. A click on Device Manager will load the Windows Device Manager which lists the computer hardware. The USB stick should be located in the Disk Drives category. Right-click the USB stick and select Update Driver from the context menu.

The Hardware Update wizard should pop up. Select the option Install from a list or specific location in the window and click next.

Check the Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install option in the next window and click next again.

A click on Have Disk in the next window will open a file browser. Locate and pick the file cfadisk.inf that has been modified previously. Clicking on OK will check the driver and show a warning message that the driver is not digitally signed. Press next on that screen.

Ignore the warning message and continue by clicking Yes. Windows should now start the installation of the driver for the USB stick and display a message that it finished the installation.

Windows is now requesting a reboot of the system to load the updated drivers properly. The USB stick should now be recognized as a hard drive. This makes it possible to create multiple partitions on the USB stick with a software partition program.

Please note that only systems with the updated drivers will recognize the additional partitions. Connected the USB stick to a computer without the modified drivers will only show the first partition of the USB stick.

The USB Drive Letter Manager runs as a Windows service that solves the problem of drive letter assignments between usb devices, subst folders and network shares by automatically checking if the drive letter has been assigned to the latter before assigning a drive letter to a new USB device.

The software program can reserve letters so that they are not used by local drives, assign letters only from a list of default drive letters and specifically assign drive letters to USB devices by placing an ini file in the device’s root directory.

Another interesting feature of USB Drive Letter Manager is the ability to remove drive letters of card reader slots as long as no card is inserted. If you ever connected a multi-slot card reader to Windows you might have noticed that each slots receives its own drive letter by default which can be a lot depending on the number of different card slots on the reader.

By default USB Drive Letter Manager is only making sure that no network shares or subst folder letters get assigned to a newly connected USB device. Everything else is handled by the USBDLM.INI file. Additional parameters are described on the homepage of the software.

Individual files can be copied to a device as well but it does not seem possible to copy single files from an USB device. The flash drive can be cleared before restoring files on it but it is not necessary.

The utility provides access to change the properties of the connected USB devices such as the volume label which can be connected to the USB image that has been restored on the USB device.

The software is compatible to Windows XP and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 1.1. Once installed runtime components can be included to provide autorun functionality.

The capacity of the usb drive is shown on the surface of the usb drive making it very easy to monitor the available storage capacity of the usb drive. I only got an usb drive that is not showing it’s available capacity making it hard to judge if the free space on the device is sufficient to copy all the needed files on it.

The capacity is shown on a ten bar capacity meter which equals the storage capacity percentage of the drive. The available storage is displayed even if the usb drive is not connected to a computer. The usb drives come with a capacity of either one or two gigabytes and look very stylish.

Read More:

Lexarmedia Jumpdrive Mercury

The USB software has a clean user interface which makes it easy to configure the options in a short period of time. You can select the program that should be autostarted when the USB Drive connects to your computer in the “Start Programs” pane. The backup function can be configured in the “Backup Folders” pane right above “Start Programs”. You may select up to three custom folders that should be backed up everytime the USB drive connects to the computer.

Several default Microsoft Windows folders such as My Documents, My Music and My Pictures have already been added and can be checked. Besides those you can browse your computer and select three folders that should be backed up as well. It should be obvious that you can’t select folders that are bigger than the space of the USB drive.

The total size of a backup is shown in My Pen Drive and you can compare that figure with the size of the USB drive. Great little application, I use it mainly for backing up personal files.

Applications can be added or removed via the PortableApps menu. The following represents a sampling of apps available on the site:

• 7-Zip Portable
• AbiWord Portable
• Audacity Portable
• ClamWin Portable
• FileZilla Portable
• Firefox Portable
• Gaim Portable
• GIMP Portable
• Miranda IM Portable
• Nvu Portable
• OpenOffice.org Portable
• Sudoku Portable
• Sunbird Portable
• Thunderbird Portable
• VLC Media Player Portable

PortableApps Suite 1.0 is a fantastic way for mobile users to compute securely using software they’ve selected on any Windows PC. So, why don’t I use it? In a word, flexibility.

In order for programs to become portable and thus compatible with the PAS interface, they have to meet certain requirements; I will mention two, here. The first, and perhaps most important, is licensing. Since most commercial software packages prohibit modification, a prerequisite for compression and dependency resolution, the number of potentially portable programs is limited. Secondly, an application must be wrapped as a paf.exe in order to be integrated into the suite. To its credit the PAS site does describe launcher construction, though, this limitation represents a significant obstacle to mass adoption in my opinion.

So, what is a burgeoning tech savant to do? Firstly, don’t forget that programs available sans installers are portable by nature. Often compressed as ZIP or RAR files, the executables contained within are incredibly versatile once decompressed, running off local drives, optical storage media, memory cards (SD, SM, CF), and even venerable floppy disks.

Also, don’t automatically preclude software wrapped in installers. Some — not all — applications can be “unwrapped” in order to expose the files contained within. I recommend Universal Extractor to check whether or not a program is capable of becoming portable. The brain child of Jared Breland, UE extracts files from a myriad of archives, including but not limited to ZIP, ARJ, LZH, MSI, and EXE. Once a package has been unwrapped, you might find yourself looking at folders named {app}, {tmp}, or embedded as well as a few shortcuts and text files depending on your particular software. While this is no guarantee, I’ve had pretty good luck moving all the files in all the directories into a single folder, {apps} for example, and launching the program from there. You can then rename the {apps} folder to something more closely resembling the program contained within, assuming the program proves stable. The last step would be to move your newly created program folder to your preferred platform.

Before you begin testing your entire software library, though, it would be worthwhile to browse the extensive repository of pre-tested portable freeware available at the aptly named The Portable Freeware Collection.

Once you have assembled the requisite applications on your preferred device you will need an interface from which to access them. PStart can be installed on your portable media and launched automatically when connected to a PC. The program is also accessible via a system tray icon. Through PStart’s main menu folders, groups or files can be added and organized. It also sports limited search functions, an attractive notepad, and information about the media. Additional customization options for hardcore tweakers are available as well.

The author is introducing seven applications: Nmap, Ethereal, Showtraf, TCPDump, Nemesis, John the Ripper and Netpass. Unfortunately though he is not linking to the tools but only describing them. That means a little googling has to be done on your site to find this applications. Not a big problem though.

Update: The article is no longer available on the website. That’s not a huge problem considering that it dated back to 2006 and that the tools introduced back then may not be available anymore. Here are links and short descriptions of all tools that are still actively in development:

TCPDump: A command line packet analyzer.

Tcpdump prints out a description of the contents of packets on a network interface that match the boolean expression. It can also be run with the -w flag, which causes it to save the packet data to a file for later analysis, and/or with the -r flag, which causes it to read from a saved packet file rather than to read packets from a network interface. In all cases, only packets that match expression will be processed by tcpdump.

John the Ripper: A password cracker.

John the Ripper is a fast password cracker, currently available for many flavors of Unix, Windows, DOS, BeOS, and OpenVMS. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords. Besides several crypt(3) password hash types most commonly found on various Unix systems, supported out of the box are Windows LM hashes, plus many more with contributed patches.

Nemesis:

TCP/IP Packet Injection Suite The Nemesis Project is designed to be a commandline-based, portable human IP stack for UNIX/Linux. The suite is broken down by protocol and should allow for useful scripting of injected packet streams from simple shell scripts

Nmap: Free security scanner.

Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing

Etheral: A network protocol analyzer.

Ethereal® is used by network professionals around the world for troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and education. It has all of the standard features you would expect in a protocol analyzer, and several features not seen in any other product.

Prices are 99$ for the 4 GB version and 149$ for the 8 GB one, the product will be available in November while the producer already accepts preorders.

Credit Card Size USB Card by LaCie

As technology becomes progressively more ergonomic and compact from the Mac Book Air to the latest iPhone and razor-thin LCD screens, now the USB drive has taken a turn in that direction. A company by the name of LaCie has introduced a USB key called the LaCie Carte Orange. The last part of the name refers to the color of the card (you can’t really call it a key) and there are two models; one with 4GB storage capacity and one with 8GB. This wonderful little device literally fits in a wallet. At 6mm in length it weighs in at a whopping 60 grams. That is less than an optical mouse and about the same weight as the average MP3 player (that tiny new iPod excluded).

This is definitely the most convenient USB memory device ever developed. Sure, the key design is convenient, but this fits in your wallet! It is the kind of thing that gets geeks very excited. The integrated USB connector fits into all USB ports and it is a flexible connector rather than a hard one. Hard connectors are easily broken, especially on laptops. The connector is also retractable, like Batman’s grappling hooks. If all of this isn’t good enough, it is also plug-and-play requiring no software or drivers. That is the true definition of quick data transfer.

Just pull it out of the package and plug in the high speed USB 2.0 connector and start transferring data. Since it requires no software or drivers, it can be used on any operating system across multiple platforms. The LaCie Carte Orange connectivity has an interface transfer rate up to 480MB per second. You can also get an optional extension cable, which is practical for desktop computers. Re-formatting is easy to fit customized purposes.

One has to expect that this design will spread all over the place and it has to a certain degree. Many companies have attempted to design credit card sized USB devices and they have succeeded, but most of them feature hard connectors with a flip design or they are merely cases for small USB or CF cards, Like LaCie’s White card model. We all know what will happen next. Just as it has been with SD cards and SD/MMC cards, the memory capacities will increase in a relatively short period of time. Probably in a matter of 2 years we will be seeing these with 64GB capacities or higher.

Considering that it is a wallet fitting design, it might not be the best thing for walking through airport security, but otherwise there is no flaw. Okay, so perhaps orange wasn’t the best choice of color except for Halloween. It is also available in black to keep in fashion with the secret-agent style to match Armani Suites and classy briefcases, not to mention the fact that most computers are black except for Macs.

This was just released this month and you will be seeing them all over the place soon. The 4GB version is $99 and the 8GB is $149. Christmas presents are going to be tiny this year.