Checklist
- Use an antivirus program on your primary computer and keep its virus definitions up to date.
- Scan your PC and USB flash drive for viruses regularly.
- Whenever you plug your portable drive into an unknown computer, you should assume that it could become infected with a virus. If that computer currently has a virus in it's memory, it may attempt to infect the applications on your flash drive as soon as you plug it in.
- When you then plug your portable USB drive into another computer (after an unknown computer), you should first scan it for viruses before running any of your applications. Then, if it is infected, you'll know before you run your applications and can avoid infecting the new computer.
- Always wait until the drive access light has stopped flashing and then click the icon in your system tray to 'Safely Remove' your device. Don't just pull it out. Just because the portable application's window is closed doesn't mean the program has fully closed and finished writing to the disk.
- Back up your portable applications regularly.
It's also worth remembering that flash drives are not as robust as hard drives, and do have a limited "life" - i.e. the number of read/writes to the flash memory, often quoted at approx 1,000,000. Therefore it is a good idea not to regularly use programs on the flash drive that cause a lot of disk activity, which would decrease flash RAM life and cause applications to run slower. Information specific to Portable Thunderbird here.
We therefore recommend that a USB key is not used as your primary location for an application, but rather that you use them specifically for portability e.g. when you are away from your primary computer, when demonstrating an application, or transferring a file from one computer to another.
