What To Do With USB Keys

I recently acquired four 2GB USB keys. My plan was to get one from a free webinar I attended and carry it around for transferring the random file. Due to problems with shipping them out which ended with me not getting one, they sent me four to make up for the delay. I now have three more than I need for my original purpose. I know that there are some good tools out there that specifically run off of USB keys. What have Mod-Bloggers run across that would be handy to have? I figure a bootable USB key with recovery tools would be good to have, but don't know enough about them to know what to choose.

PhotoRescue Saved My Bacon!

I have a photographer friend who gave me some sage advice. "Don't invest in high volume memory cards for your digital cameras," he said. "Instead, but a lot of smaller cards which add up to the number of gigabytes you need. That way, if one goes bad, you haven't lost a full day of shooting." I noted the wisdom, but thought there was no reason for ME to follow it. After all, I thought, when have I *EVER* had a memory card become corrupted?

Well, last night, it happened! This weekend has been the Districts Quiz for the Bible Quiz Team I coach. I am sort of the unofficial photographer for the whole event, taking team pictures of all of the other teams as well as candids all the day long. I took over 600 pictures with my Digital Rebel XT, and was looking forward to getting them into iPhoto in preparation for uploading to Flickr overnight. Well, I got back to the hotel and had some problems with an old memory card reader (which is now bound for the trash). In a few easy steps, it managed to COMPLETELY corrupt the memory card - my single 4 gigabyte memory card. Suddenly, the whole weekend was lost!

In panic, I went to Google and typed in "rescue photos from a compact flash card" and prayed that there would be something other than the $200/hour data recover services. There was! I found Photo Rescue, which is a piece of software for both MacOS X and Windows which can pull the data off of damaged cards for $29 (one-time registration fee). I was desperate, so I gave it a try. It took HOURS to reconstruct the data on the card, but once it did... IT WAS A COMPLETE SUCCESS!!! It not only recovered the 600+ photos from yesterday, but another 300+ photos previously deleted from the card by my purposeful action! At this point, I highly recommend this piece of software if you wind up with a similar disaster.