My USB flash drive

While I was bored at work one day, I searched the web for cool things and/or programs people put on their portable USB flash drives. Although most people seemd to store porn on their USB key drives, some had other neat things. I found quite a bit of cool stuff including a web-browser (portable FireFox), an e-mail program (portable ThunderBird), an e-mail program with encryption allready included (portable ThunderBird with Enigmail), an entire Office Suite (portable OpenOffice), and a neat on the fly encryption program (TrueCrypt) to keep everything nice and secure and prevent everything on my flash drive from being used by anyone but me if it ever got lost.

What I decided I wanted...

I wanted an e-mail program on my USB flash drive that would allow me to check my e-mail from anywhere. I also wanted the ability to encrypt and/or sign my outgoing mail. Portable Thunderbird with Enigmail was just what I was looking for.

I also wanted to encrypt some of my USB drive with some sort of On-the-fly encryption program. TrueCrypt fit the bill perfectly.

How I did it...

I downloaded TrueCrypt to my home computer and installed it. I then created what TrueCrypt calls a "traveling disk" by going to "Tools->Traveller Disk Setup" for my USB flash drive. I chose to use 100 MB portion of my 512 MB for my on the fly encryption.

I then ran TrueCrypt from my USB drive (from the 412 MB of my USB flash drive that isn't encrypted) and mounted my encrypted portion using the "Mount" command from within the program.

Next I installed Portable Thunderbird with Enigmail on the newly mounted part of my USB drive and then ran it and imported my GnuPG keys. Voila! I now have an encrypted portable e-mail program that I can run from any Windows based (because TrueCrypt runs only on Windows at the moment)! I went ahead and installed portable FireFox for good measure as well for secure web-browsing.