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What's on your "Everyday Carry" USB stick?

Just picked up a 128GB USB A/C stick that can go on my keyring. What are some things I should put on it to have access to at all times?

I already have self hosted services accessible over my VPN, so this would be for when I can’t access that.

I’m thinking at least Ventoy and some common ISOs, then I’m not sure what else.

monovergent ,

A metal 128 GB USB on my keychain next to the U2F key

16 GB Ventoy partition with:

  • Clonezilla (‘deploying’ my system image and backups)
  • Mint Debian Edition (everything needed to test and recover my Debian systems)
  • Debian netinstall
  • Various manuals and reference documents
  • Portable CrystalDiskInfo and VeraCrypt for Windows
  • Dumping grounds for files that I intended to transfer between machines, particularly the XP retro gaming rig
  • An optimistic IF-FOUND.TXT
  • KeePass
  • Previously Windows, until once upon a time, I booted into WinRE via Ventoy, got confused between X:, C:, and whatever else, and proceeded to nuke my USB instead of another disk. The Windows installer lived on its own USB happily ever after.

And a LUKS encrypted partition in the remaining space with more documents and a backup of almost all of my photos.

Rossphorus ,

I have three partitions: First one is Ventoy with a couple of distros per architecture. Partition two is a standard exfat partition for files. Partition three is a small fat16 partition, since there’s always that one device someone has (oscilloscope, 3D printer, UEFI/BIOS, etc.) that only supports very simple file systems. I’ve had to use the fat16 partition more than a couple of times and I don’t even work with legacy hardware.

nichtburningturtle ,
@nichtburningturtle@feddit.org avatar

I’ve got 3 usb’s on my keychain. One for ventoi, one for tails and one for random storage.

JackbyDev ,

I’ve got a USB stick on my keys but I don’t remember what’s on it because I’ve never used it lmao.

Grimpen ,

I’ve got a 15 year old SD/USB combo card on my keychain. I plugged it into a TV around 6-7 years ago because there were a couple of kids movies on there.

I also know I have some Portable apps on there, but probably a little out of date

Cyv_ ,

Yeah main thing is Ventoy and images for windows 10 and 11. I also have some basic tools, and some portable versions of some games I like (OoT, Warcraft 3, etc).

Asudox ,
@Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

Some useful files I might need someday (of course encrypted), bootable linux rescue distro and of course tailsos just in case.

ProgrammingSocks ,

Pretty boring. School textbooks and portableapps with a few of my essentials - Firefox, vim, GIMP, and some others I’m forgetting right now.

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

Deniable Encryption

BigMikeInAustin ,

Sorry about the negativity from so many people.

You do what works for you.

rotopenguin ,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

I have a Debian 12 install on a 5GB partition (btrfs compression is magic), and the rest is exfat. It has rEFInd as the bootloader, should be pretty good at detecting and running other OSes with bootloader problems.

Ooops , (edited )
@Ooops@feddit.org avatar

Ventoy and…

Clonezilla, (custom) ArchISO, Tails

the stuff you might need to safe other people’s PCs sigh …

HBCD_PE, Windows 11

If I hadn’t included those in my ArchISO already I would probably add…

one of the usual Rescue ISOs, GParted Live.

Bonus points for Ventoy’s ISO partiiton doubling as simple storage.

PS: Thanks for the reminder to update some of them again.

Magister ,
@Magister@lemmy.world avatar

Of course Ventoy and multiples ISO, but also a full copy of SDIO, it’s maybe 30-40GB, but absolutely essential for Windows

CapillaryUpgrade ,
@CapillaryUpgrade@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Lots of people have already mentioned Ventoy.

MediCat is Ventoy with a ton of images and a config file. It seems great, although I chose to roll my own as MediCat had a lot of Windows-centric images i have no need for.

Coreidan ,

What are you doing with your life that necessitates carrying a USB drive everywhere you go?

wheeldawg ,

What kinda question is that? Seems pretty judgemental to me.

Some people are “the computer guy” for a BUNCH of people, and if your usual pocket arrangement allows them there are a bunch of tools you can use for different jobs.

It’s just a different kind of pocketknife at the end of the day. I don’t interact with nearly enough people to need one, but I can definitely see the possibilities.

This seems like a question that 90s people would ask. “What are you doing with your life that necessitates carrying a globally-connected supercomputer in your pocket?”

In different use cases I can see plenty of times where a bootable USB drive can mean you can use your own computer from any other machine. Which is super cool. It’s gonna be a much slower version of it, obviously(because of USB read/write, but pretty cool that you can carry a full copy of your system, settings, documents, and programs than can sync to/from your regular backups. Or another with copies of other boot level tools to have on hand. If you help a bunch of people with covering from microshit to Linux, then keeping a LiveISO on hand for them to try out and install seems like a good idea to keep around.

There’s just so many reasons why you would ask this. Personally I don’t, but if I did I would like to think I could ask the question.

If nothing else, it’s interesting to think about for sure. Now I kinda wanna imagine what kind of stuff is even possible to run like this that would be useful to me.

I only own one such at all, and I’ve only used it a very few times. Once to install my own OS, once to install a different one I leave at my brother’s house because his laptop is having issues and I go over there to watch movies with him, and once to install that same one (Mint in those cases, Pop for mine) on my parent’s computer.

If I find a good enough use case, I would start carrying at least one. But for now I just rewrite this one for whatever things I need at the time.

MonkderDritte ,

Two partitions for a live linux, the second for home and other data. It can come in handy, if you’re on linux.

solidgrue ,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

I do this. A Debian Live image and an encrypted LVM for home. Came in handy a few times for the odd system rescue

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