Dear Lifehacker, I have never used the Safe Eject option when removing USB drives from my laptop. Instead, I just yank it out once the files have been transferred or saved. I'm pretty certain I'm not in the minority here. Is this bad?

The humble USB drive - supplanted by the download and the cloud sync, but still useful in all kinds of ways. If you've got an old drive lying around, here are some of the ways you can put it to use that don't just involve sharing old pics to your mum.

Dear Lifehacker, I always take my thumb drive wherever I go. I'm also a bit absentminded. I want to guarantee my thumb drive gets returned to me if I ever lose it. My idea is to have malware hidden on the drive in a specific folder labelled 'porn101' or 'myprivatefiles'. If the person opens that file, it will automatically encrypt their computer and ask them to email me to get the unlock code. (I will give it to them once they return the thumb drive to me, of course.)

Which brings me to my question - is this legal? It's not like I'm demanding money or anything. I just want my property back!

Earlier this week, the Victorian Police issued an alert about malware-laden USB thumb drives being found in residents' mailboxes. The idea of distributing malware through USB sticks isn't new and yet research has found that many people would plug in a USB drive that they find in a public place. This kind of attack is known to be used by attackers to gain access into corporate networks by luring careless employees into plugging in booby-trapped USB sticks in their work computers. More education is needed to warn end-users about the dangers of USB sticks found in public spaces.

Flash drives can come in all sorts of fun shapes and sizes (my current favourite is shaped like R2-D2), but wouldn't it be cool to make one with your own design? With a microwave kiln and some glass you can.

With the convenience of cloud storage, USB flash drives might seem like old news, but the best are portable, fast, near-indestructible and offer tons of space -- enough that they're worth having. Here are five of the best, with links to Australian deals.

Unlike internal solid state drives, recovering deleted files from USB flash drives isn't difficult. Formatting USB flash drives will help prevent recovery, but only if you use the normal format.

Windows: To safely remove USB drives and memory cards from Windows, you have to mouse over to the Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media icon in the taskbar. USB Disk Ejector will do the same thing, but with a quick keyboard shortcut.

It seems like every day there's fresh news of a site or service being hacked. The intruders make off with usernames and passwords, and even if they're encrypted the service forces users to change them. Here's how you can fight back and avoid hassles when the next hack happens.

Windows: If you find yourself leaving your USB drive in your work computer and cursing yourself after you arrive home, USB Guard will make sure you always remember to take your flash drive with you.

Windows: ProEject is a freeware utility that safely dismounts any removable drive by closing running applications and windows that are based on the drive. It can do this while automatically cleaning the registry and folders of the host computer from any trace the USB drive may have left behind.

Chances are you've accumulated a few spare thumb drives over the years, choosing new ones thanks to better form factors and increased capacities. But what do you do with the old ones that are just lying around? Here are our top 10 clever, fun and practical uses for your spare thumb drives.

If you trade a USB thumb drive, hard drive or other portable storage between Mac and Windows systems, the .DS_Store, .Trashes, and other starts-with-a-dot files left behind by Macs can get annoying. This script automatically wipes away those left-behind files.

Windows: If you find yourself needing to create multiple duplicate flash drives, ImageUSB makes the process painless with concurrent drive imaging. Batch the process and image as many drives as you have USB ports available.

Windows: If you've forgone installing a Wiki because configuring and running your own web server seemed like a pain, DokuWiki on a Stick packs DokuWiki into a tiny and portable package perfect for USB drives and Dropbox folders.

Back in 2008, we told you how to access the slightly convoluted process for changing an assigned drive letter for a USB drive in Vista. Tech blogger Helen Bradley found that the same approach can also help if Vista is flat-out refusing to recognise a drive which you know is working.

We've featured a few ways to hide your data in plain sight, but DIYer Thice took a different approach: he actually hid a USB thumb drive inside his mouse.

Have you ever wanted a nice personalised copy of Ubuntu to take around with you? Even if you aren't well versed in the terminal, Remastersys makes it very easy to create a customised live CD from the Ubuntu you already have installed.

While your best bet is to not lose your thumb drive in the first place, yesterday our readers expanded our tip to name your thumb drive with your phone number with several pretty clever ideas.