What's on your "Everyday Carry" USB stick?
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.
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.
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:
- 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.
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.
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.
Kingston DataTraveler Micro 3.1 128GB USB 3.0. I leave it on my keyring to trade movies/tv shows/music w friends 🏴☠️
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.
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.
Deniable Encryption
Ventoy with every ISO I've needed to install, and Snappy Driver Installer Origin with its full set of drivers.
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
What's on your "Everyday Carry" USB stick?
- scans of my DL and other licenses
- scan of my DD214
- system rescue ISO
- a TEMP dir with random things I need in the short term
- portable apps versions of putty, WinSCP, etc.
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
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.
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
Eh...
Ventoy (on a comically small external hd -- 8 GiB) and retrogaming/backup-related files on a 1 TB one.
I had one:
- Live OS, Fedora KDE or something
- 5GB FAT32 for printers and windows, lol
- X GB encrypted EXT4, F2FS or BTRFS for storage
I don't really carry one anymore, but the one I have at my desk has Ventoy and LMDE on it for when I need to mess with something requiring my system to be down or modify my OS partition. I don't really do much on other PCs except when I have to help my wife with something.
When I was working at my last job I carried 2-3 with a ton of database backups and proprietary software and firmware files for clients' automation systems. Kinda don't miss it at all, but it sure made me feel important, lol.
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.
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
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.
Pretty boring. School textbooks and portableapps with a few of my essentials - Firefox, vim, GIMP, and some others I'm forgetting right now.
I've got 3 usb's on my keychain. One for ventoi, one for tails and one for random storage.
I carry an empty one, to make copies of movies I find on work computers.
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.
Some useful files I might need someday (of course encrypted), bootable linux rescue distro and of course tailsos just in case.
ventoy with medicat, kali, crunchbang plus plus
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).
Permanently Deleted
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...
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.