Pen drive for EDC

[dangerman]

I bought I little pen drive which is also a radio and mp3 player from eBay for £4. I'm really pleased with it, it takes a single aaa battery which makes it very versatile.

Whenever I watch anyone's EDC videos they always have a pen drive with whopping capacity, but really why do they need it? This one is 4GB and I've put photographs of all my family's passports, birth certificates, licences, other certificates etc onto it, as well as emergency contacts in case I were to lose my phone or something.

There is plenty of room left for a couple of Lionel Richie albums to keep morale up if needed too.

Are there any other essential documents that I'm missing?

Maybe we need a comprehensive list of stuff to keep copies of. I've not encrypted the drive yet, but I will be doing so asap and putting a password on that my wife knows.

[Arzosah]

If it's encrypted ... banking details, financial details, insurance, email log ins (you can reset any password to any website if you just have your email available to you) - work qualifications - if you read www.theplacewithnoname.com thats the kind of thing he needed after evacuating in front of Hurricane Katrina. What about your own family photographs, not just photos of your documents?

[Kris369]

Hi Dangerman. Interesting topic, was independently updating my emergency pen drives (1 at home and another in my multi-use grab bag in my car) this weekend. Personally have 10gb of must have data and that's compressed, all depends on what you want to keep for me its the lifetime of family pics and videos that i would never want to loose, interestingly this is 99% of the data, birth docs, passports etc are just a few mb's each.

Think the fact that a 32gb stick is exactly the same physical size as a 1gb one i personally choose to have it all.

I DO NOT ENCRYPT or password protect files as these would require an executable file to run to unlock and access files therefore would not be accessible via public pc's such as libraries or those set up in emergency situations which is exactly when you would need to access them. The memory sticks are well hidden in my safe/buried deep in my grab bag and do not believe anyone could do anything with them even if for some reason they even considered taking them, let alone finding them.

Why would you need finance info? As long as you have internet access these are available and if not your probably in a situation you couldn't use it anyway.
Deliberately not included bank details and my personal info to prevent misuse, everything else is worthless or is protected by bank or company security procedures.

My two pennies worth anyway, obviously as normal everyone's needs/wants are different.

[Bad Wombat]

I DO NOT ENCRYPT or password protect files as these would require an executable file to run to unlock

If you encrypt your USB stick with bitlocker then it will be accessible on any normal Windows PC running Vista upwards. No need for any 3rd party executables. Haven't tried it in my local library yet though!

[HBP]

The encryption part of this is always difficult. Many products require the user to be an administrator on the computer they are using or already have some software installed that can handle the decryption process. A lot of publicly accessible computers are very locked down for obvious reasons so its worth testing anything on a few different PCs you may have access to just in case.

The most universal one I have found to date is the Ironkey. They use hardware encryption rather than software. They are a great product but a very expensive one.

[Bad Wombat]

... Ironkey. They use hardware encryption rather than software.

A great product - yes, but you will still need to run their Unlocker software to access the device. See details here. This will be most likely be blocked on a public computer. Bitlocker is build into Windows (Vista and above). It's the only one I know of that might work on a public PC. Though it's still possible to block it with a group policy.

[HBP]

Inevitably there will always be an executable involved somewhere. That's where testing comes into play.

I recently came up against some versions of windows 7 don't include bit locker but IIRC that was for FDE not removable drives. Also hit the cross platform issues in the past but then I do tend to bounce across windows, Mac, Linux and some Unix platforms at times so probably a special case.

If you have group policies involved then your in unknown territory. If your looking at kiosk PCs then it wouldn't be the first time I have seen mounting file systems via usb being disabled so no point worrying about encryption.

It comes down to, what do you want to protect and what information you really need to have access to.

Most people could get away with using truecrypt (despite all the negative hype) if they are really concerned about the data they carry. Just don't forget the password

[Bad Wombat]

Most people could get away with using truecrypt

I used to use truecrypt, and quite liked it, but sadly it's no longer supported. The current truecrypt page (here) tells you to use bitlocker. If you want a really quick and dirty solution you could always use an encrypted zip file. 7-zip is free, open source and supports 256 bit AES encryption, but you will run into trouble again trying to access it on a locked down PC.

[Briggs 2.0]

I bought I little pen drive which is also a radio and mp3 player from eBay for £4. I'm really pleased with it, it takes a single aaa battery which makes it very versatile.

Whenever I watch anyone's EDC videos they always have a pen drive with whopping capacity, but really why do they need it? This one is 4GB and I've put photographs of all my family's passports, birth certificates, licences, other certificates etc onto it, as well as emergency contacts in case I were to lose my phone or something.

There is plenty of room left for a couple of Lionel Richie albums to keep morale up if needed too.

Are there any other essential documents that I'm missing?

Maybe we need a comprehensive list of stuff to keep copies of. I've not encrypted the drive yet, but I will be doing so asap and putting a password on that my wife knows.

I have a few USB drives but I've switched to carrying a micro SD card, a micro to standard size SD card adaptor and a micro SD USB adaptor. Smaller size plus you can access data via all three formats.

There's a bit of geek in me and I'm about to explore the wonders of raspberry PI and one thing I'd use it for is being able to access this data long after my phone/laptop has run out of juice.

[HBP]

Most people could get away with using truecrypt

I used to use truecrypt, and quite liked it, but sadly it's no longer supported. The current truecrypt page (here) tells you to use bitlocker. If you want a really quick and dirty solution you could always use an encrypted zip file. 7-zip is free, open source and supports 256 bit AES encryption, but you will run into trouble again trying to access it on a locked down PC.

That's why I said "despite the hype"

It still works and works well. Plus the security concerns are generally unfounded. Your average person aint getting in and if your worried about the government having access then you have bigger issues.

7-zip is great. I keep a copy of the portable version on some of my usb drives. Which is a little more on topic for the OP.

Have a look at http://portableapps.com Could be useful to have a few of your favorite programs on a USB dirive along with the documents. Still might come up against the Kiosk PC lock down but not everywhere.

I have a few USB drives but I've switched to carrying a micro SD card, a micro to standard size SD card adaptor and a micro SD USB adaptor. Smaller size plus you can access data via all three formats.

That's a good idea. I have considered it a few times and now that a lot of portable devices can read from micro SD cards it becoming more useful.