Desk Drive: get automatic drive/media shortcuts on your desktop
Desk Drive is a free program that adds automatic shortcuts on the desktop to flash drives and other media when you plug them in, and removes these shortcuts automatically when the drives are unplugged. Supported media include (CD’s/DVD’s, removable drives, fixed drives, networked and RAM drives).
The idea behind this rather original program is to spare you the need to go hunting in “My computer” for a flash drive’s letter number in order to access it when you need it, but rather magically make a shortcut to it appear on the desktop when it is plugged in, and disappear when the drive is unplugged. Honestly this should have been an option in Windows.
The not-so-good news: this program takes up 18 megs in memory, which is surely a lot for this kind of program (and requires MS .NET Framework v2). Also, I’m not sure why but this program did not work on my work computer, but worked just fine on my laptop at home; could it be because I have .NET v3.5 at work? Lastly, I would have liked the option to make the tray icon not be shown.
The verdict: while it might use up a good chunk of memory this is an original, interesting program that could be very useful to some users. You will simply have to weight the cost/benefit: the extent of practical usefulness you foresee vs. whether your computer has the memory to spare.
Version Tested: 1.0
Compatibility: Windows XP; no info on Vista. Requires .NET 2.0 Framework.
Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 500K).
wow, that sounds like a good deal of memory for not much return. Incidentally, Gnome (and I think KDE) do this by default in Linux, and now I can’t live without it, seeing as how I now have a least a 1Gig thumb drive behind my work badge all the time - it’s very helpful. Also in Linux I now use sshfs - which allows you to add a shortcut to your desktop that is a folder on a remote server over ssh - the FUSE based sshfs system keeps it connected so it’s just like using a local folder. Cuts down on having to ’scp -r’ stuff all over the place too!
fak3r
1. Assign permanent drive letter to flash drive.
2. Create shortcut.
Cuts need for framework, 3rd party utility and 18 Mb of memory.
[...] El veredicto: Si bien el uso de memoria es un poco desconsiderado, es un interesante programa que podría ser muy útil para algunos usuarios. Sólo debes ponderar los costos y beneficios: el grado de utilidad práctica frente a la memoria disponible (yo tengo 1GB de RAM y no me causa problemas). Fuente: http://www.freewaregenius.com/ [...]
Try opening the settings dialogs and then dismissing it. Memory usage drops to about 1.7 MB on my machine.
.NET programs exhibit different memory usage than normal programs so the memory use can be a bit misleading.
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My black and whit Mac Plus,did this 20 years ago!
[...] drive or media shortcut on your desktop. Simple, easy and of course less clicks involved. [via freeware [...]
Hello ,
Your site is the best for finding good freewares !
But there’s a better alternative for detecting automatically USB drives : USBLDM
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html
USBDLM is Freeware for private and educational (schools, colleges, universities) use only.
USBDLM can for newly attached USB drives
* check if the letter is used by a network share of the currently logged on user and assign the next letter that is really available
* reserve letters, so they are not used for local drives
* assign a letter from a list of new default letters, also dependent on many different criteria as the active user, drive type, connection (USB, FireWire), USB port, volume label, size and others
* assign letters for a specific USB drive by putting an INI file on the drive
* remove the drive letters of card readers until a card is inserted
* show a balloon tip with the assigned drive letter(s)
* define autorun events depending on many different criteria
* many other things, see help file, available online as HTML version too
All functions are applied to USB drives at the moment they are being attached, when the USBDLM service starts up and when a user logs on.
USBDLM runs as Win32 service under Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 and Vista. 64 Bit versions are untested but should work too.
Not free memory consumed this time
Best regards
Cyke64 (freeware fanatics !)
[...] “Windows only: Freeware application Desk Drive monitors your computer for new media—like a new CD, DVD, or thumb drive—then automatically creates a desktop shortcut pointing to your newly mounted media. Disabling autoplay is safer and less annoying than leaving it enabled, but that means you have to open up My Computer every time you plug in a thumb drive or insert a new disc. Desk Drive gives you quick and easy access to that media from your desktop as soon as you plug it in, similar to the default (and arguably better) behavior found on Macs. The downside: Desk Drive takes up way too much memory (around 17MB in my test), so it may not be worth it unless you’ve got boatloads of RAM.” Desk Drive [Blue Onion via FreewareGenius] [...]
[...] “Windows only: Freeware application Desk Drive monitors your computer for new media—like a new CD, DVD, or thumb drive—then automatically creates a desktop shortcut pointing to your newly mounted media. Disabling autoplay is safer and less annoying than leaving it enabled, but that means you have to open up My Computer every time you plug in a thumb drive or insert a new disc. Desk Drive gives you quick and easy access to that media from your desktop as soon as you plug it in, similar to the default (and arguably better) behavior found on Macs. The downside: Desk Drive takes up way too much memory (around 17MB in my test), so it may not be worth it unless you’ve got boatloads of RAM.” Desk Drive [Blue Onion via FreewareGenius] [...]
[...] program is similar to the afore-mentioned "Desk Drive" in that it aims to provide the user with automatic shortcuts to their USB and other drives [...]
[...] | Freeware Genius Descarga | Desk [...]
Amigos/As:
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PURA VIDA . . .
WOOT . . .
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[...] Desk Drive [via Freeware Genius] [...]
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