My Rig

This may take a while, but I'll try to describe my full setup, everything from my day-to-day applications, all the way to my security implementation, and the backup solution I use...this may take a while.

In general, I try to use free tools as much as possible, further more, 99% of the tools I use are the portable version of the application (For more info about portable USB setup and application see the Portable Computing category).

Let's start with the core of my electronic world:

99% of the programs, applications, and software I use are portable and on my USB thumb drive, it is a 16gb Super Talent Pico-C USB flash drive(recently upgraded from 8gb) that literally has my whole world on it.

I have it setup as 3 main sections:

1. Main environment setup area.
2. Programs and application area.
3. Data area.

#2 and #3 are encrypted files that are mounted as drives (X) and drive (Y) using TrueCrypt Portable.

See mote details on "How to setup a portable applications USB drive".

Main environment and setup area - Drive (Z)

This drive has everything necessary to start my environment when I plug my USB stick into a computer, notice I said "a computer" and not "my computer"...with this setup, any computer that I plug my USB drive into becomes my computer.

• TrueCrypt Portable - Encryption application to secure all my data and applications in case my USB drive falls into the wrong hands.
• Opera Portable - This is a special version of the lightning fast Opera browser, it actually operates inside your computer's RAM, which means it is not reading and writing to the USB drive constantly and slowing down things, every thing it does is in RAM (memory.
• KeePass Portable - This acts like a safe for any data, I store passwords, credit card info, bank info, etc. It has some cool features and very versatile. I have it set up to open 4 tabs on the browser, navigate to websites, and enter username and password. It is setting up my initial browser session.
• EjectUSB Portable - This utility will close all the programs that are running from this drive and eject it.
• AutoHotKey Exacutable - This is a compiled executable that I created using AutoHotKey, it has all kinds of shortcuts, execution commands, macros, and others.
• Cygwin Portable - This allowed me to run Linux commands on windows. I use it for some file manipulation, and just to play around with Linux.
• ProgramFiles1 - This is an 2 gigabytes file/container encrypted using TrueCrypt Portable, it contain all my programs and applications.
• MyDocuments1 - This is an 4 gigabytes file/container encrypted using TrueCrypt Portable, it contain all my data.
• StartUp-1.bat - A script that starts few initial applications and mount the 2 drives for ProgramFiles1 and MyDocuments1.
• StartUp-2.bat - A scripts that runs after all the encrypted drives are mounted, it opens the rest of my apps and complete the environment setup.

My Documents - Drive (Y)

Drive Y:\ is a mounted encrypted drive using  TrueCrypt Portable, this is where I keep all my documents including work scripts, and the base code and objects for all my domains/websites. Basically anything that is not a program lives on drive Y. I use the basic FileSystem method of directories and sub-directories to keep everything organized and easy to find.

Program Files - Drive (X)

Drive X:\ is also a mounted encrypted drive using  TrueCrypt Portable, it has all the software, programs, and applications I need.

The main application on this drive is  LunchBar which is a highly customizable portable program launcher.

Most of programs I use can be found on www.PortableFreeware.com, an excellent source for portable applications.

• AkelPad Portable - Text editor.
• AudaCity Portable - Audio file editor.
• AutoHotKey Portable - This gives you the ability to write windows macros of sort, you can pretty much do ANYTHING on a windows machine with this. I use it to automate many tasks, like my email signature for example, hot keys for different applications, etc. This is one of my favorite applications since you can pretty much create anything you like or need with it.
• BleachBit Portable - Free disk space and cleanup a lot of junk from your computer. Clean all kinds of cache, temp directory, app temp settings, etc.
• Ccleaner Portable - Clean the windows registry, configure start-up applications on windows, clean and free up space on your hard drive.
• CheckFolder Portable - Check and try to repair corrupted files and folders.
• CintaNotes Portable - This is one of my favorite applications, it is a crazy fast, searchable, note saving application...very small, very quick.
• ClamWin Portable - An open source passive virus scan.
• Clipbox Portable - Clipboard manager.
• College Alarm Clock Portable - Configurable alarm clock program.
• Cports Portable - See what's going on with ports on your computer, kill connections, and manage ports.
• CrystalDiskInfo Portable - A HDD/SSD utility software which supports S.M.A.R.T. and a part of USB-HDD.
• Defraggler Portable - Disk defragmenter.
• DontSleep Portable - Prevent the computer from going to sleep or the screen from becoming black.
• EditPad Pro Portable - Powerful and highly configurable text editor, good for programming, html coding, etc.
• EjectUSB Portable - Close any program that is open on the drive it is running on and eject the USB.
• eToolz Portable - A bunch of useful network tools like ping, DNS search, WhoIs, HTTP-Header, and more.
• FileZilla Portable - This is the best FTP client I have used, it allows you to save account info, have few tabbed connections, do diff between local and remote files, and much more.
• Firefox Portable - A portable version of the popular FireFox browser, it is not as fast as Opera Portable so I only use it to test my websites.
• FoxitReader Portable - A PDF reader, in my opinion it is much better than Adobe PDF reader.
• FSViewer Portable - A very cool photo and image editor, you can do so many things with this tool, edit photos, crop, fix color, batch rename, bach process...the list goes on and on.
• Google Chrome Portable - Again, as far as portable browsers Opera Portable is the fastest, I'm using this one to test my websites.
• GreatNews RSS Reader Portable - Just like the name implies, this is really a great news feed reader, many options and customizations.
• LibreOffice Portable - A full free suit of Microsoft-like office tools: word processor, excel style app, presentation app, etc.
• Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel Portable - Let you create virtual CD drives on your computer by mounting image (*.iso for example).
• Infra Recorder Portable - Burn CDs, I never really use this anymore, who needs to burn CDs when we have USB sticks...I keep it just in case.
• Mega IRC Portable - An IRC chat client that I use for work.
• Lunch Bar Portable - This is the best fully customizable application luncher I have seen, it offers many configuration options so you can have it setup the way you like, plus it's very easy to use.
• Media  Coder Portable - This is a comprehensive media I use it to reduce video size but it can do much more.
• Media Player Classic Portable - This is a light weight media player that is based on one of th earliest versions of windows media player, it is simple to use, and can play almost any video format or codec.
• Mp4Cam2AVI Portable - Convert MP4 video format to AVI format and does it very nicely.
• NetSetMan Portable - A network setting manager, can keep multiple network settings and implement on request.
• NetWorx Portable - Network bandwidth monitor.
• Notepad2 - Similar to Microsoft notepad but with much more functionality, things like line number, syntax highlighting, and more.
• Opera Tor Portable - A portable Opera browser with a built-in support for Tor for increased security. I use this one when I'm on the road and using hotels wi-fi.
• PL/SQL Developer Portable - A database interface tool that makes a database developer or a DBA life much easier, I use this at work.
• ProcessHacker Portable - A Windows Task Explorer replacement on steroids, tons of info on every running process, service, dll, memory, network, etc.
• ProcessTamer Portable - A great little program that throttle the resources on your computer, you can configure how much of the computer resources each program will use.
• ProgrammersNotepad Portable - A text editor on steroids, many functionalities and configurations geared toward code writing.
• PSPad Editor Portable - Just another text editor? not exactly, I use PSPad for a few years and I can say that it is the BEST text/code editor I ever used...and I think I tried all of them. I have quite a few domains and PSPad is my weapon of choice when I'm working on code.
• Putty Portable - A Linux/Unix terminal application.
• Q10 Portable - A text editor special geared toward writers, it has the basic writing functionality of spell check and such, it occupy the full screen and has plain text only to avoid distractions.
• RadioSure Portable - Internet radio with hundreds of free stations from all over the world with many different genres.
• RamOptimizer Portable - this little up will reclaim the RAM on your computer based on your options setting. This is good when you have RAM hungry applications running on your machine.
• Revo Uninstaller Portable - this is a must-have for any self respecting computer/windows user. It will completely un-install and cleanup any program or software you want to remove from your computer.
• Security Task Manager - Display a list of running OS running tasks with security risk rating, including some details about the process. This tool is great for identifying treats on my Windows OS.
• Send To Smugmug Portable - upload photos and videos to my Smugmug account/website.
• Skype Portable - a program that allow you to use the Skype service: chat, online calling, video conferencing.
• SpyBot Search & Destroy Portable - a spaywere remover, scan the computer of many harmful things and nuke them.
• Spy DLL Remover Portable - effectively detect and delete spywares from the system.
• SuperCopier2 Portable - manages multiple copying in threads and allow to skip errors instead of failing the copy operation.
• TCPOptimizer Portable - help you configure your TCP for optimal speed.
• Shutter Portable - timer that can take different actions when time is up.
• ToDoList Portable - a very robust and comprehensive ToDo list management application, I use this on a daily base for work and private stuff.
• TreeSize Portable - shows space consumption on a disc, by file and by directory. This is very useful especially when all my stuff is on a USB. This tells me where I can trim some fat.
• TrueCrypt Portable - encrypt / decrypt files, directories, drives. My whole framework depends on this program to keep everything nice and secure.
• Universal Extractor Portable - this is the secret souse of my whole setup, UniversalExtractor will take almost any application or program, and will turn in into a portable one. You can probably figure it out, but without Universal Extractor my rig will not be the cool thing it is today.
• AegiSub Portable - add subtitles to videos in an easy and professional way.
• VNC Viewer Portable - VNC portable client that allow me to connect to any computer with VNC server installed.
• WinMerge Portable - a tool to compare two files and identify the differences, I use this mostly at work when I have to compare code versions.
• WinRar Portable - a compression and de-compression app, support many formats like ZIP, RAR, Z7, and more.
• XMedia Recode Portable - recode and convert video files from one format to another, change sizes, and some light editing.
• XMind Portable - mind mapping program, easy to organize thoughts and ideas.
• XYplorer Portable - a tabbed windows file browser, very customizable, has many useful feature and improve productivity. I tried many many file browsers, this is the one I'm sticking with.

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