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.
Well I carry it anyway for impromptu file transfers. I’ve just added 1gig of survival PDFs. Probably never need them but who knows
You’ll carry it until the plastic cracks and it falls off your keyring.
So don’t put anything too private on there.
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
Oh, then stick ventoy on it, and just shrink the partition and give yourself some permanent storage space too. Alternatively, just do the same for a live Linux iso of your choice.
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
https://www.reddit.com/r/Survival/comments/732c79/ive_collected_a_bunch_of_free_survival_pdf_links/
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
You ought to read them and practice their use otherwise you’ll never know if they’re unintelligible when/if you need 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.
Not OP, but this instantly made me think of the worst-case scenario PDFs I stumbled upon on Lemmy recently.
Thank you I’ll take a look :)
How would you access it in a survival situation?
My phone that has no connection, or any USB A / C device that’s around? Not saying its likely
Wouldn’t it just be easier to store stuff on the phone…
Why not both? I’m not lacking in storage on either the USB or the phone.
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.
With no phone/tablet/laptop how are you going to look at them?
Print them out and/or memorise (as much as you can) them.
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.
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
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
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.