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.
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 .
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 .
The grizzled greybeard spoke up, brandishing his weathered USB drive above his head like a sword. "I can do it. I'm a sysadmin."
"Oh, thank God!" the flight attendant sighed. "It says something about booting, I'm not sure. Nobody here knows Linux."
The greaybeard squeezed himself out of his seat and stood in the aisle. "I’d just like to interject for a moment." he interrupted with a raised finger and a self-satisfied expression. "What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/LInux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX."
He shifted his bulk to block one of the other passengers, who was screaming behind him that nobody cares. The pilot was now standing behind the flight attendant, begging the sysadmin to come up to the cockpit, but the greybeard was undeterred. "Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates t—"
The sysadmin never finished his sentence; the airplane smashed into the ground and all aboard were killed instantly. The impact somehow caused the GNU/Linux device to reboot correctly before it too was smashed to pieces a fraction of a second later.
The sysadmin managed to utter as the plane smashed into the Earth, 'I use Arch by the way'.
Booted in a fraction of a second. Nice.
Well I carry it anyway for impromptu file transfers. I've just added 1gig of survival PDFs. Probably never need them but who knows
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
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.
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!
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.
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
lol, I feel you there. I got a ruggedized, waterproof USB stick about 6 years ago to keep on my keychain and I've used it maybe three times ever. Though I've also been working from home for the last 4+ years so, y'know, less opportunities to use it in general.
Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, though.
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.
How have I never thought of partitioning one large USB drive for multiple purposes...
Windows is not very pleasant about dealing with a removable drive with more than one partition.
Just sticking a USB stick into a bunch of different ports, is going to get you an STI eventually.
How do you make the stick read only? To prevent picking up malware along your journey?
STI
Serially Transmittable Infection?
No. Don't be stupid. Serial Tract Infection. Duh.
This is where the physical write protect notch on SD cards would be useful.
Do you want to spread malware? Because that is how you infect an Iranian nuclear project.
A metal 128 GB USB on my keychain next to the U2F key
16 GB Ventoy partition with:
And a LUKS encrypted partition in the remaining space with more documents and a backup of almost all of my photos.
Sorry about the negativity from so many people.
You do what works for you.
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.
Mine is mostly lighting console show files of various concerts/comedians/dance performances I have been the lighting designer for. I know my use case is different than most people's, but hey, you asked.
Thats dope. I suppose grandma? Do you keep them around to copy stuff over to your current project?
Mostly Avolites and ETC. Mostly just always save to a couple of USB sticks as backup, one of which lives on my keys and the other in my computer bag. It is nice to have quick access to my user profile and some pre-built stuff though. Some of them I keep around because I do those shows every year but mostly it's just not worth the effort of deleting them because the files are so small. They are also all backed up to my home server.
512GB Ventoy, every version windows that can boot from ISO. Gandalf's win 10 PE, gandalf's 111 PE, Debian live ISO, max versions of Debian and NixOS, silver blue and fedora. Ubuntu along with LTS. I could have put my crypto partition on it, but I actually like keeping that as a separate key.
I had to google ventoy and now I feel like a cave man because I have a dish with 6 flash drives that all have different ISOs
My dish still has a flash drive marked "Win 8" which I've since overwritten with... Some flavor of Linux. Mint maybe.
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?
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.
Sounds nice. I wonder if there's some open source project with similar features?
Kingston DataTraveler Micro 3.1 128GB USB 3.0. I leave it on my keyring to trade movies/tv shows/music w friends 🏴☠️
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.
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.
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.
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.
Flipper zero seems fun but idk if I can justify that price. I don't think I'd use it much.
Ventoy with every ISO I've needed to install, and Snappy Driver Installer Origin with its full set of drivers.
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.
I got two identical 64gb sticks. One's for a Ventoy setup with a bunch of different ISOs, in case anything has to be done and/or recovered. The other just has occasional random files i might need
64 GiB, two partitions, one with my files including Keepass database, the other with Ventoy with ISOs for Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, Debian 13.5 KDE, NixOS Gnome, Win 10 and bazzite
ventoy with some live image, gparted, and arch iso
Sorry for the noob question.
I know Gparted helps format disks and stuff, but what can you do with it on a USB stick? Is it to format and partition other computers you come across? And how did you get Gparted on the stick itself?
Thanks
just for when i screw up the partitions on my computers
you can get a live iso image with gparted :)
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.
Sameeee
A medicat install, insanely useful.
What is that?
A bunch of (totally) legally aquired tools on a ventoy install. https://medicatusb.com/ also check out their discord we got a great community
Two partitions for a live linux, the second for home and other data. It can come in handy, if you're on linux.
I do this. A Debian Live image and an encrypted LVM for home. Came in handy a few times for the odd system rescue
What's on your "Everyday Carry" USB stick?
I had one:
Eh...
Ventoy (on a comically small external hd -- 8 GiB) and retrogaming/backup-related files on a 1 TB one.
Different Linux distros and Windows. Because I regularly need them.
How regularly do you really need them? Surely by the time you come to reinstall an OS there's already a later version available, doesn't it just make sense to create a fresh USB each time?
For example about a month ago I installed Project Bluefin on a couple of devices so that USB is lying around somewhere. But in the meantime the maintainers have rotated the update signing keys so that month old installer is now redundant.
Windows does not really have a version afaik, so I just update it every few months. Debian live is just for visually editing/moving partition in complex setups, and I can fix my Arch install with an installer/live iso that's months old. It's just that I don't want multiple USB-Sticks, and need multiple ISOs at the same time (eg. Arch and debian live for rescuing my installs, or Win 10/11 for new Installs for more tech illiterate people - Win 10 is the "just functions" thing for my father, when we need a laptop for proprietary laptops, and 11 is for other people who need something set up. Additionally, I use Windows' installer environment to update my Laptops, servers and workstations BIOS.)
Well if you don't have an actual use case for it, don't try to artificially find one.
The only thing I use USB sticks for nowadays is for OS installs.
For everything else their write speeds are slow (even the more expensive USB sticks slow down to a crawl after what feels like not even one complete overwrite) and they are unreliable.
Sure, if you want to carry around random OS installers and live environments, go for it. I personally don't have a use case for it.
Before Google Drive and Syncthing I relied on such a USB device. Today, no matter what I put on the stick, it's outdated or entirely not what I need when I need something.
Having any stick on hand, and being able to flash an image from your phone, that's nice
right now mine has manjaro+cinnamon. i booted my wife's Win11 laptop to it so she could test drive it and within ten minutes she was asking how to get to the installer. i hope to repeat this process with others as well.
Of course Ventoy and multiples ISO, but also a full copy of SDIO, it's maybe 30-40GB, but absolutely essential for Windows
Ventoy with bazzite, arch, think there's a tails or something similar, a few recovery and hacking tools
I hate to break it down but you probably dont need one
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).
I have a copy of MX Linux installed, as well as encrypted copies of all my most important data and a few commonly used portable utilities for windows and Linux. It's mostly just an emergency backup, but I have used the other parts before, just very rarely.
Tails and another for storing random stuff, like a copy of documents when travelling.
I carry an empty one, to make copies of movies I find on work computers.
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.
I've got 3 usb's on my keychain. One for ventoi, one for tails and one for random storage.
Kali
Cheers, currently grabbed Ubuntu, Fedora, GParted, and Kali.
Some useful files I might need someday (of course encrypted), bootable linux rescue distro and of course tailsos just in case.
Pretty boring. School textbooks and portableapps with a few of my essentials - Firefox, vim, GIMP, and some others I'm forgetting right now.
ventoy with medicat, kali, crunchbang plus plus
What are you doing with your life that necessitates carrying a USB drive everywhere you go?
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.
Honestly, carrying around a usb drive is generally a pretty good idea. I carry one with several ISOs so I can rescue a machine if something happens and I am unable to fix it (and also show people what modern Linux has to offer).
This is something I carry pretty much anywhere I take my computer, and would recommend to most people. Sure, I could leave it at home, but if I have to meet a deadline, I don’t want to spend the extra hour driving to my house. It’s a worst case scenario kind of thing, but it pays off considering how little effort takes.
I carry one in my bag so I can easily transfer files to our from my instructor's computers without having to fuss around with email or my Google drive account
The only solid reason I can think carry anything on a USB stick is if you're going to be in an area without Internet. If you're in an IT role where you're interacting with end-user machines all the time, then the answer would obviously be some sort of live environment to troubleshoot or fix issues. In that case, load a Ventoy partition with a few different images, and and be done with it I guess.
If you're thinking like a Prepper or whatever, keep a copy of Wikipedia, and some survival books maybe? Maps? That's all I can think of. If you're going this far, better carry a backpack with portable solar panels, a large battery, and a lifejacket. None of this matters when you don't have food and water though, so...
Yep, you could fit wikipedia with images and some general knowledge books into about 110GB of space. Perfect use for it lol
If it's anything like mine, this is a great idea that's going to get smashed to fuck
Git repos of some helpful scripts and configs.
Music.
Profile backup.