Free USB Guard : Never Leave USB Disks Behind

Yesterday I saved all my work in my USB key, thinking that I would finish it at home. Then I shutdown the computer, had a cup of coffee and drove back home – only to realize that I had forgotten my USB key attached to my work computer! It was already late in the night and I could do nothing but clench my fists in anger. Well, if you have had such a terrible experience with forgetting your USB keys at work or at friends’ house, then you can try Free USB Guard. The free USB Guard software is a portable software which warns you if your USB key is still attched to your computer when you are trying to turn it off.

The software is available in a portable format. You can just download the ZIP archive, extract its contents to a folder and double-click on Free_USB_Guard.exe to run it. The Free USB Guard puts a icon in the notification area in the bottom-right corner of your Windows desktop. The Free USB Guard automatically sets itself to run every time Windows starts. If you do not want this, then you can disable the automatic start from the notification area context menu.

Free USB Guard

By default, the Free USB Guard monitors only the removable USB disk drives attached to your computer. But you can also select other types of removable disk drives. You can select or deselect which drives are to be monitored from the notification area icon content menu Monitor the presence of these drives.

Free USB Guard

When you try to shutdown your Windows computer while your USB thumbdrive is still attached, the Free USB Guard interrupts the shutdown process and throws a warning that your USB drive is still connected. You can choose to continue to the shutdown, restart, hibernate etc. But a usual response would be to take out the USB key and continue with shutdown.

Free USB Guard

So next time when you start wrapping things up at work or getting ready to come back to home from a friend’s house – do not leave your USB keys carrying your useful data behind with the help of the Free USB Guard. It can save your from a lot of headache.

You can download Free USB Guard from http://www.myportablesoftware.com/freeusbguard.aspx.