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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.

Rogue ,

The reason you’re struggling to think of anything to put on it is because you don’t need to be carrying a USB drive.

No aircraft cabin crew have ever put out a call asking if there are any Linux sysadmin onboard with a copy of GParted Live v1.5.0 for 32bit ARM devices .

smeeps OP ,

Well I carry it anyway for impromptu file transfers. I’ve just added 1gig of survival PDFs. Probably never need them but who knows

wewbull ,

You’ll carry it until the plastic cracks and it falls off your keyring.

So don’t put anything too private on there.

smeeps OP ,

I’ll encrypt anything vaguely private. Honestly its a useful way of me not losing it around the house too, I must have 3 or 4 USB sticks in the house but when I need to install an ISO I can never find any

SaintWacko ,

How would you access it in a survival situation?

smeeps OP ,

My phone that has no connection, or any USB A / C device that’s around? Not saying its likely

Rogue ,

Wouldn’t it just be easier to store stuff on the phone…

smeeps OP ,

Why not both? I’m not lacking in storage on either the USB or the phone.

Rogue ,

Isn’t it just far easier to transfer documents using one of the thousands of cloud apps though? Since Dropbox and such became a thing I’ve not had a use for USBs. If it’s privacy that concerns you then you already mentioned self hosted services and I’m sure there’s a few Dropbox clones among them.

There’s not much point in survival PDFs unless you’re also carrying a laptop to view them on.

If you really do want to go full apocalypse prepper then track down an archive of Wikipedia and various how-to websites.

Jumuta ,

i honestly prefer using usbs over cloud stuff because of the speed and it being less hassle, unless it’s a situation where I can just just syncthing or kde connect

smeeps OP , (edited )

Sure, for devices that already are logged in then yes. But to log into my Proton Drive I have to enter my password and authenticate with my Yubikey and it might not be a trusted computer, or the internet connection might be slow. And my self hosted services including my Seafile are behind a VPN so I’d have to log into my VPN on that PC to access them. I definitely transfer files by USB on occasion.

I guess I can put a VPN config file on my USB in the encrypted folder so I can connect to it from any trusted PC

otter ,

Another common use case is for when I need to give someone else a file when we’re in the same room. It’s not worth the hassle of trying to transfer it over a network or wirelessly, especially if they are large files or we are on a different OS/ecosystem.

The USB stick just works.

mesamunefire ,

You could get a very very old ebook reader from a yard sale. You get something functional and a lot of them act like a USB drive.

Plus a very small solar panel can charge it.

otter ,

Do you have a link to the survival PDFs? I’m curious

I have a few apps like that installed, such as first aid for example. Might as well get some useful guides on my USB in case my phone is dead.

Also my recommendation

  • portable programs. Pick some that might be useful and add those. I have never had to use one, but I keep them anyways
  • Some media to pass the time. This has come in handy once or twice
  • extra space for large file transfers
smeeps OP ,

reddit.com/…/ive_collected_a_bunch_of_free_surviv…

Original Zip link is dead but someone in the comments recreated it. No idea if they’re any good, hopefully I’ll never look at them

ouch ,

No idea if they’re any good, hopefully I’ll never look at them

Well, better to be prepared. When you are starving and freezing from cold in a forest, lost and about to be mauled by a black bear, it’s nice to have that stick around so you can quickly grab it and shove it sideways up in the arse of the bear.

Todd_cross ,

You ought to read them and practice their use otherwise you’ll never know if they’re unintelligible when/if you need them.

sunzu ,

No aircraft cabin crew have ever put out a call asking if there are any Linux sysadmin

Does not mean it will never happen!!!

sysadmins save lives!

slazer2au ,

Do you want to spread malware? Because that is how you infect an Iranian nuclear project.

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.

EccTM ,

When I last had an everyday carry USB stick (5+ years ago) I found I never actually used it for anything.

I had Ventoy and some practical ISOs, and PortableApps with a bunch of useful software (firefox, foobar2000, GIMP, notepad++…) for when I was using someone else’s Windows PC.

…think I stored like two word documents on it, ever.

c0smokram3r ,
@c0smokram3r@midwest.social avatar

Kingston DataTraveler Micro 3.1 128GB USB 3.0. I leave it on my keyring to trade movies/tv shows/music w friends 🏴‍☠️

jol ,

I haven’t carried a USB stick in years, so not sure what I would do. Maybe a copy of my recipe book if I ever digitize it?

pezmaker ,
@pezmaker@sh.itjust.works avatar

If you ever do digitize it, or even going forward for other recipes you use, I recommend checking out the recipe app Paprika 3. I’ve been using it for years now and love it. It even bypasses pay walls on recipe sites like NYT cooking when downloading. Enter the url in the browser section, and hit download regardless of the paywalls I’ve encountered so far. I put cocktail recipes in there too.

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

Deniable Encryption

ExtremeDullard ,
@ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

My “everyday carry” isn’t a USB stick, but it can act as one - and much much more: I always have my trusty Flipper Zero with me, and the image I carry in the mass storage emulator is the Linux Mint installer, with extra space in the image to store small files.

To be honest, the Flipper Zero’s mass storage emulator turns it into the slowest USB stick you never saw. But in a pinch, it’s there and it’s usable. I use my Flipper for a variety of other things all the time - including, with my laptop, as a presentation remote and secondary mouse - and I almost never need a USB flash drive. So slow though it is, it’s enough for when I do need one.

JackbyDev ,

Flipper zero seems fun but idk if I can justify that price. I don’t think I’d use it much.

Bougie_Birdie ,
@Bougie_Birdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I also have a USB stick on my keys. Mostly I keep books I’m reading, favorite movies, stuff like that. Then when I’m hanging out with friends later and we’re talking about what we’re watching I have it all ready to share.

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.

BigMikeInAustin ,

Sorry about the negativity from so many people.

You do what works for you.

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.

danielquinn ,
@danielquinn@lemmy.ca avatar

Mine is a durable, metal 128GB stick. It lives on my keyring and has a relatively recent copy of Arch on it. It’s handy for fixing broken laptops and rescuing data. A friend has a more advanced one, with multiple distros on it for different diagnosis options.

The rest of the disk space is just xfat.

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.

nossaquesapao ,

I used to leave some usb device with multiple bootable isos lying round my table, but I found out that every time I needed something, none of them would serve me, and I had to download something else, so I don’t do that anymore and just download and write isos as I need them. Oh, but I still keep an old 4gb usb stick with some random distro on it, just in case my pc becomes unbootable and I have to do some maintenance/data rescue.

JackbyDev ,

Sameeee

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