USB flash devices such as pen drives are an essential and most common way to carry along the data on the go. This could include your private and confidential files that you might want to secure to prevent them from unauthorized access, in case you lose the pen drive or someone at your workplace analyzes it while you’re away. Fortunately, such activity can be simply prevented by locking the flash drive using USB Safeguard.

USB Safeguard is a free, smart and effective tool to encrypt and protect data with a
password on your removable pen drive using the AES 256 bits encryption. It is a portable program offering novice and expert users the ability to easily password protect the pen drive, thus to protect the valuable data stored on flash drive and prevent data theft. It sets a password for the entire pendrive and not just for a certain file or folder. Once the drive is locked, one cannot read nor write any data to it without the correct password. Supports FAT16, FAT32 & NTFS file system, requires no installation.

How to Password Protect a Pen Drive – Download USB Safeguard, then copy the file "usbsafeguard.exe" to the root of your pen drive and run it. Agree to the software license agreement, Set your password and press Lock button to lock the pen drive. To unlock, launch the program from pen drive. Input the password and hit Unlock to access the entire data stored on the drive. You can click on help icon (?) to set your contact details (email or phone) in case you loose the pen drive.

Note: The free version works only with USB Flash drive of size max 2 GB. This seems fine as the tool is really very nifty and useful.

Related Posts:

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• No Autorun – Safeguard Windows from Infected Pen Drives

The official ‘Building Windows 8’ MSDN Blog launched recently has shared information on some of the new and improved features, considered to be introduced in Windows 8. Microsoft is aiming to revise and improve the file management basics in Windows 8 that includes these common but most used features: Copy, Move, Rename, and Delete.

These core file management commands, collectively referred as “copy jobs”, will offer a great experience in next build of Windows OS. The focus is to improve the experience of users who are involved in high-volume copying with Explorer, want more control, more insight into what’s going on while copying, and a cleaner, more streamlined experience.

In Windows 8, we have three main goals for our improvements to the copy experience:

• One place to manage all copy jobs: Create one unified experience for managing and monitoring ongoing copy operations.
• Clear and concise: Remove distractions and give people the key information they need.
• User in control: Put people in control of their copy operations.

Based on these goals, they’ve made four major improvements to the copy experience. Below is a short video demo of these improvements:

Check the official blog post for detailed info with screenshots.

Windows 8 also brings robust USB 3.0 support -

With throughput up to 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and improved power management that results in longer battery life, USB 3.0 introduces compelling reasons to improve the world’s most popular PC interface.

Video – A preview of USB 3.0 in Windows 8

Read the official blog post for detailed info.

We hope MS would continue to share more interesting stuff about Windows 8.

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Apple has just introduced a small app “Lion Recovery Disk Assistant” for Mac OS X Lion users that lets you create Lion Recovery on an external drive. Although, OS X Lion has ‘Lion Recovery’ integrated by default but the Recovery HD partition exists on the boot disk, thus making it pretty difficult to repair or reinstall Lion in case the hard drive fails. (Assuming you don’t have a Installation DVD of Lion or a Bootable flash drive).

The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant lets you create Lion Recovery on an external drive that has all of the same capabilities as the built-in Lion Recovery: reinstall Lion, repair the disk using Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup, or browse the web with Safari. This drive can be used in the event you cannot start your computer with the built-in Recovery HD, or you have replaced the hard drive with a new one that does not have Mac OS X installed.

Requirements:

• A Mac running OS X Lion with an existing Recovery HD
• An external USB hard drive or thumb drive with at least 1GB of free space

Note: The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant will erase all data on the external drive when creating the Recovery HD. You should either backup your data before running the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, or create a new partition on the external drive.

To create Lion Recovery on an external drive, download Lion Recovery Disk Assistant application on your Mac. Insert a USB flash drive or external hard drive, launch the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on screen instructions. Check the below screenshots:

>> The new partition will not be visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. To access Lion Recovery, reboot your Mac while holding the Option key. Select Recovery HD from the Start-up Manager. The external Recovery drive is represented by a orange color icon.

Notes:

• If the computer shipped with Lion, the external recovery drive can only be used with the system that created it.

• If the system was upgraded from Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard to Lion, the external recovery drive can be used with other systems that were upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

Source: Apple

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• How to Burn OS X Lion Install DVD or Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive
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OS X Lion (v10.7) has been finally released, the upgrade is now available for download at Mac App Store for $29.99. The Lion upgrade has a pretty hefty size of 3.49 GB which can be downloaded only through Mac App Store. Although, you have the option to download the latest upgrade from a Apple retail store but this makes it cumbersome if you want to install Lion on your other Macs or systems with no broadband access, thus to prevent downloading the same upgrade for other Macs individually.

There is an easy way to overcome this problem – just Create a Bootable DVD or a USB Flash drive to Install Mac OS X Lion on multiple Macs without any hassle. OS X Daily has recently shared a perfect step-by-step guide which allows you to simply perform this task, just follow the steps carefully as suggested in their post. Check the links below:

Note: After upgrading, Lion deletes the installer file automatically from the Applications. So, perform this task before running the Lion upgrade or make a copy of the installer to some other place on your Mac.

- How to Create & Burn a Bootable Mac OS X Lion Install DVD

- Make a Bootable Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Installer from a USB Flash Drive

- How to Burn Your Own OS X Lion Install DVD or USB Drive [Lifehacker]

Before proceeding to install OS X Lion, make sure your Mac is compatible and running Mac OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard or higher.Related Posts:

• How to Upgrade Mac to OS X Lion
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• Create a Bootable USB Drive to Install Windows 7, Vista & Windows Server 2008
• OS X Lion Released with over 250 New Features [Download from App Store for $29.99]

Here is an alternative way to synchronize and backup data of your Android phone to Windows computer, for users who don’t want to use the native PC Suite application. Moreover, you can backup over Wi-Fi without connecting phone to PC with a data cable.

This can be done using the latest MyPhoneExplorer v1.8.0 which now supports various Android phones. This program was initially designed for Sony Ericsson mobiles but the recent version also supports Android-based phones (connected via Wi-Fi or USB cable).

MyPhoneExplorer is a free, small, and easy-to-use program that lets you synchronise and backup your mobile phone data which includes your Phone Contacts (Phonebook), Messages (SMS), Calls history, Calendar. It also lets you browse and manage all the files and folders located on the Phone memory and memory card.

How to Backup Android phone Contacts & Messages to Computer –

1. Download and Install MyPhoneExplorer on your Windows PC.

2. Download and Install ‘MyPhoneExplorer Client’ app on your Android phone.

3. You can connect phone to PC over Wi-Fi or using a USB cable. Run the ‘MyPhoneExplorer Client’ app on your phone and make sure the phone is connected via Wi-Fi or USB to your computer.

4. Now Run MyPhoneExplorer on your PC. Go to File > Settings > Connection. Choose the same settings as shown below and click OK.

5. Click on File > Connect. Your phone should now be connected to PC and phone data will get synchronized automatically.

6. To Create backup, open the ‘Extras’ menu and click on ‘Create Backup’ option. Chose a location on computer to save the phone backup file. You can Restore it anytime.

7. Exit the ‘MyPhoneExplorer Client’ app on your phone after the task gets completed.

This process looks quite lengthy but is useful too! Hope you liked it.

Related Posts:

• How to Backup your Nokia phone Contacts to computer
• MyPhoneExplorer – Sony Ericsson mobile phone manager
• How to Transfer files between PC & Android phone via Wi-Fi
• Download LG PC Suite IV with LG Air Sync
• Remove Duplicate Contacts on Android and Sync Contacts with your Gmail account [How To]

If you want to transfer data like applications, music, and videos from your computer to Android phone OR from Android phone to computer, then you need to connect both the devices using a USB cable connection or pull out the SD card to transfer your data.

However, if your Android device and PC is connected over a common wireless network, then you can easily transfer files wirelessly (over Wi-Fi) without using any USB cable or the cumbersome SD card method. Check the below tutorial carefully:

Note: You can only browse and transfer files to/from the SD card of phone.

Transferring Data between Android and Computer over Wi-Fi -

1. Make sure Wi-Fi is turned on your phone and both the PC and phone are using the same wireless network/router.

2. Download and Install SwiFTP Server on your Android device from the Android market. Use the given QR code:

SwiFTP is an open-source FTP server that allows you to connect to your phone over wifi or cellular/3g to upload and download files. Any FTP client can be used.

3. Launch ‘SwiFTP’ app and click on the ‘Setup’ button. Enter a desired username and password. Input /mnt/sdcard in the Stay within folder entry and click ‘Save’.

4. Now click the Start button on SwiFTP Server. Let it run and display the Wifi URL.

5. Open ‘My Computer’ on your PC now, enter the FTP address (Wifi URL) in the address bar. A dialog-box will open as shown below, just enter the username and password that you setup in Step 3. (Tried on Windows 7)

You’ll now be able to manage data on your SD card & transfer files between computer and your Android device over WiFi. Stop the SwiFTP app after the task is completed.

Hope you liked it! Don’t forget to check our ANDROID section for more exciting content.

Thanks Pratyush for the tip.

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LG PC Suite IV is a free and official program from LG, that helps you connect your mobile phone to a PC using a USB data communication cable or a Bluetooth connection. It lets you Backup the desired phone contents to PC that you can Restore when needed.

You can access the functions of phone on your PC with the LG On-Screen Phone program. You can also connect to the LG Air Sync site to synchronise data from three locations; a phone, a PC and the web and also to upload data from LG PC Suite IV to the web. There’s also a feature to connect to Internet on PC via your mobile phone.

With LG PC Suite IV you can:

• Create, edit and delete phone data conveniently
• Synchronise data from a PC, phone and the Air Sync site (Contacts, Calendar/Task, Memo)
• Transfer multimedia files (photos, videos, music) conveniently with a simple drag & drop between a PC and phone
• Transfer the messages from a phone to a PC
• Check if a new software update (firmware) is available for your phone
• Connect to the LG Air Sync* site and upload data to it
• Synchronise mobile bookmarks to your mobile browser
• Operate a mobile phone and manage the files stored on the phone using the On Screen Phone program

LG PC Suite is available in 45+ languages for Windows OS.

Download LG PC Suite IV with LG Air Sync (Size: 107 MB)

Check the LG Air Sync support site.

*LG Air Sync service is limited to specific phones.Related Posts:

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• How to check and Update the firmware of Nokia Mobiles ?

One must backup their mobile phone contacts by transferring them to computer because disaster comes without any notification. We are here to discuss as how to backup or transfer the contacts/phonebook of Nokia phones and store them on your computer.

Follow the steps below to Save Nokia contacts to PC –

1. Download and Install Nokia PC Suite version of your phone model on computer.

2. Connect your Nokia phone to computer via a USB cable or Bluetooth connection.

3. Launch Nokia PC Suite and open the “Contacts” option.

4. Nokia Communication Centre will now open, and the Contacts of your connected device will appear. Select all the contacts using Ctrl+A or choose specific contacts by selecting the preferred contacts while holding the Ctrl key.

5. Open the File menu and select the “Export” option. A window will now appear asking where to save the .csv file of phone contacts. Save the file.

6. Upon exporting the contacts, you will see ‘contacts exported’ message.

You can also edit contacts before exporting them. Open the .csv file with MS Excel.

This method is recommended if you don’t want to create a full backup of phone data and settings because that doesn’t lets you explore the contacts, as the backup file is saved with .nbu extension. Though, you can open .nbu backup files with Nokia Nbu explorer but that’s a pretty typical task.

Note – You may not be able to backup contacts of some Nokia phones using this method because Nokia PC suite is not supported by low end phones.

Related Posts:

• How to Backup Contacts & SMS of Android phone to PC via Wi-Fi or USB cable [Tutorial]
• How to Delete All Contacts on an Android phone
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• Nokia Nbu explorer – How to open .nbu Backup files
• How to Copy/Save/Transfer iPhone or iPod Touch Apps to PC using iTunes