Almost everyone who owns a USB drive has accidentally left it plugged into a computer somewhere. Forgetting your USB drive means potentially losing all data stored on the drive, but it also leaves the data exposed for anyone to see, since very few people password protect these devices.

One way to keep from forgetting your USB drive while it is plugged into a computer is to install a reminder software like USB Alert on your drive

From USB Alert’s homepage, click the link to download the portable version of the software. Save it somewhere on your computer.

Unzip the file’s contents to the root folder of your USB drive. This is very important—if you unzip the file to a folder on the drive, the autorun will not work properly.

You may need to disable your antivirus software to install the autorun.inf file. With Avira AntiVir, we had problems installing the file on the USB drive. Make sure to scan the files with your antivirus program before disabling it, just in case.

Once installed, eject your USB drive by clicking the USB icon next to your clock and choosing your USB drive from the list that appears. When prompted, unplug your device.

Plug back in your USB drive. This time, USB Alert will start automatically. Look next to your clock for the USB Alert icon to ensure it is activated.

Right-click the icon to see the list of devices it is monitoring. This not only works for small USB flash drives, but also for larger, external hard drives.

Now, if you lock or shut down your computer, a message will appear reminding you to remember your USB drive.

USB Alert has the right idea, but the software does not play nice with antivirus software. Many antivirus programs are designed to not allow rogue autorun files to run. You can manually start USB Alert at any time by clicking the USBAlert.exe file, but this defeats the purpose of automation. USB Alert is worth a try, but we definitely encourage the developer to continue making improvements to this software.