Instant Removable Drive Shortcuts with Desk Drive

The problem with having so many removable devices – back-up drives, USB sticks, CD disks, DVD disks and so on is that when you put them into your computer, you then have to go searching in Windows Explorer to see where what drive it is running on so you start it and access it. Lots of clicking around which is not very productive.

I was looking at Lifehacker the other day and they mentioned a tool called Desk Drive which is supposed to solve that problem so I decided to see what it was all about.

Desk Drive

Desk Drive is a lightweight Windows application that sits in your system tray and monitors your computer activity. As soon as you plug in a removable device such as a USB stick or a disk, Desk Drive knows (because you set it up in the configuration) and it immediately puts a shortcut to the device on your PC desktop for you to click on.

Desk Drive

Then when you have finished using your device, just unplug it and the shortcut immediately disappears from your desktop!

Very nice! That one is going in my “keeper” folder!

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, professional freelance writer and the editor of Make Use Of. Check out his personal blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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Mark O'Neill

Mark O'Neill is the managing editor of MakeUseOf.com

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  • http://www.unsightul.com Lee Mathews

    Another Pro Tip for USB drives: Set up a simple autorun.inf on it. Add three lines of code:
    [autorun]
    icon = .\3369.ico
    label=My Name’s Drive

    …and drop an icon in your root, and you’ve got fast, visual confirmation which drive letter is yours.

  • Ben

    Cool application. One problem that I have with my external USB drive is that my computer always has that pop-up window asking me what I want to do once the device is plugged in. Will this app solve that problem at all?

    • Chris K

      Hold down Shift when you connect a drive/turn it on.

      • Ben

        thanks chris

  • Daniel

    Just like what OS X does, eh?

  • http://www.approachinggeekdom.com Joshua Jabin

    Thanks for the great tip. I get used to Ubuntu doing this, and it will be great to make it so that Windows can do the same thing.