Being a geek often means you’re tech support for half the local community. Just yesterday I was ambushed by two people at work who wanted computer help, and that’s not the first time. As a well prepared geek, my wallet has some tools that might come in handy.

In my wallet I keep fours flat USb drives the thickness of SD cards – or rather 2 USB drives and 2 microSDHC readers with cards in them. These four drives can solve a LOT of problems one might run across when out and about and someone snags you fro some on the spot tech help, and they’ve done so several times.

My most used drive is a bootable version of Ubuntu. I used to have a 8.04 USB drive, but finally got around to making one with the latest version 9.04 on a microSD card (one of the white readers in the pic). This lets me boot any computer into Linux, either to troubleshoot hardware issues (like “my wireless card doesn’t work” “…in windows or at all?”), extract files before re-installing an OS after the current OS won’t boot, or use tools like gparted to non-destructively partition the HDD.

Secondly, a bootable USB drive (again a microSDHC with a reader) with Windows 7 install files. Since I use a netbook all the time, it’s nice to have everything I need to repair or even reinstall the OS if I have to right on the spot (of course I have a dedicated partition for files containing both documents/pictures etc and install files for all apps I use AND backups of FireFox and Thunderbird, so I don’t even need an Internet connection to restore the system 100% on the go – if I have to).

My old taped up 4GB USB drive is currently serving as a portableapps drive, containing my own version of FireFox and Thunderbird as well as 7zip, Open Office etc etc – If I need to move files using the drive for pure storage, or if I’m using someone else’s computer and want my own applications (run straight from the drive without installing), that’s all on the drive.

Lastly, I have a 1GB drive with a bootable version of Spinrite using FreeDOS. Spinrite is an app to do serious bottom level data recovery from hard drives on a much deeper level than those wannabe-tools that run from inside the OS. This little pendrive helped save files from an HDD that the IT guy at work had just a couple of weeks ago.

That’s it, four powerful computer tools that put together take up about 1/3 as much space as a credit card. If you’re a serious geek and used to being ambushed by people who learn by doing stupid things on a computer (like not backing up files) tools like this can make your life a lot easier.