I recently picked up a great deal at a VIP sale at The Good Guys Ipswich: a 4GB Verbatim flash drive for A$3 each. Given there was a limit of five, I took advantage of the deal and bought my limit of five. I’m pretty happy with that deal (seeing I just returned from my local supermarket where the same drive was selling for A$27!); now just to find a use for all of them…

Given I have so many now, I’m getting into the habit of carrying one with me everywhere (you’re likely rolling your eyes now: USB sticks are so 2005). But they don’t rely on the Internet and every computer has a USB port these days. That makes a USB drive a must have tool. I’m also running PortableApps on the drive. It’s a great way to have important applications configured my way wherever I go, plus a good way to carry work from machine to machine at university without having to continually log in and out of Dropbox.

Carrying this USB drive with me everywhere got me thinking – What if I lost it? USB drives are small (admittedly the Verbatim ones are a bit of a chunky monkey, but A$3 is a steal anyway you look at it). I’ve already dropped one in the car (luckily I knew about it that time). What would happen if I lost my USB drive with all my important files and apps?

Appealing to the belief that most people are at least a little altruistic, I decided I would put together a short text file providing my name and return/contact details at the top-level folder (the root for the technically inclined) on the drive (and a thank you to the person for finding it). It is a quick way to identify a drive as yours and have it returned quickly (rather than having it stolen).

I uploaded a template text file that I used for my lost USB drive notice over here. Just populate it how you like and copy it to the top level directory of your USB drive. It is simple. You can add or remove entries in the contact details section to you liking (for example, I don’t include the Facebook entry on the version I use).

Hopefully this simple solution will save your USB drive from being lost for eternity at some point in its life. But lets hope it never comes to your USB drive being lost.