I don't know about you but I like to be prepared. I don't always do a good job at actually preparing, but I think about it a lot. Let's look at an instructable for an emergency USB thumb drive. This instructable is about what's on the drive, not how crazy it looks,
WHAT-
This instructable should give you all the knowledge you need to prepare an emergency USB thumb drive that you can keep in your wallet at all times. It will be there for you when you need it and believe me, you will need it. You'll pat yourself on the back the first time you remember it there. It is there, isn't it?
WHY-
Why do this? We'll we live in an uncertain world. All you have to do is turn on the tube and watch the news to know that the world is going to hell, fast! Speaking from a personal perspective, I can't change world events single handed, but I can cover my own butt and maybe make the task of providing information to someone or some entity easier on me. Remember trying to pull info together for an application or form to fill out? A little stressful right? What if you house burned down, got copies of all your records?
I also considered putting all this information up in the cloud (the internet) but I'm not yet comfortable with the security aspect and one other important thing, you need a broadband connection, not available everywhere yet.
WHO-
You, or someone able to use a computer, digital camera, scanner, the internet, you get the picture. Here's a thought- provide this service for your elderly parents or someone who isn't digitally gifted. It will make you feel real good.
WHERE-
Right on your computer. It could be Windows, Mac or even from the internet. More and more online services are popping up all the time to perform tasks independent of you desktop. A word of caution though, this instructable is written to favor Windows and many of the portable applications here are Windows only. Sorry my Mac pals.
HOW-
That's what I'm about to share with you. The instructable is broken down into major sections like:
1. Why Choose This Drive
2. Altering the Case
3. Important Contacts
4. Health Records
5. Important Documents
6. Family Photos
7. Home Inventory
8. Music & Video
9. Online Logins & Passwords
10. Vehicle Info
11. Portable Applications
12. Protection & Encryption
Disclaimer: These instructions are meant to be a guide to you in preparing one of these emergency thumb drives of you own. I am passing this knowledge on to you because it has worked for me. I am not liable for any damages or loss of data you may incur due to following or not following these instructions.
Please use common sense and ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA!
WHAT-
This instructable should give you all the knowledge you need to prepare an emergency USB thumb drive that you can keep in your wallet at all times. It will be there for you when you need it and believe me, you will need it. You'll pat yourself on the back the first time you remember it there. It is there, isn't it?
WHY-
Why do this? We'll we live in an uncertain world. All you have to do is turn on the tube and watch the news to know that the world is going to hell, fast! Speaking from a personal perspective, I can't change world events single handed, but I can cover my own butt and maybe make the task of providing information to someone or some entity easier on me. Remember trying to pull info together for an application or form to fill out? A little stressful right? What if you house burned down, got copies of all your records?
I also considered putting all this information up in the cloud (the internet) but I'm not yet comfortable with the security aspect and one other important thing, you need a broadband connection, not available everywhere yet.
WHO-
You, or someone able to use a computer, digital camera, scanner, the internet, you get the picture. Here's a thought- provide this service for your elderly parents or someone who isn't digitally gifted. It will make you feel real good.
WHERE-
Right on your computer. It could be Windows, Mac or even from the internet. More and more online services are popping up all the time to perform tasks independent of you desktop. A word of caution though, this instructable is written to favor Windows and many of the portable applications here are Windows only. Sorry my Mac pals.
HOW-
That's what I'm about to share with you. The instructable is broken down into major sections like:
1. Why Choose This Drive
2. Altering the Case
3. Important Contacts
4. Health Records
5. Important Documents
6. Family Photos
7. Home Inventory
8. Music & Video
9. Online Logins & Passwords
10. Vehicle Info
11. Portable Applications
12. Protection & Encryption
Disclaimer: These instructions are meant to be a guide to you in preparing one of these emergency thumb drives of you own. I am passing this knowledge on to you because it has worked for me. I am not liable for any damages or loss of data you may incur due to following or not following these instructions.
Please use common sense and ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA!
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Signing UpStep 1: Sony Micro Vault Thumb Drive - My Choice
Why choose this drive?
Well simply put, it's
1. The smallest practical drive I can fit in my wallet.
2. Most modern computers have USB drives. All platforms.
3, You can put in your wallet and you can't feel a bulge.
4. It's available in a variety of colors and capacities. I thought that the 2gb would be enough.
5. I don't have any brand loyalty to Sony, but they do make pretty good stuff.
Here's some alternatives that won't fit in your wallet but that are indestructible:
Corsair Survivor
Iron Drive
Well simply put, it's
1. The smallest practical drive I can fit in my wallet.
2. Most modern computers have USB drives. All platforms.
3, You can put in your wallet and you can't feel a bulge.
4. It's available in a variety of colors and capacities. I thought that the 2gb would be enough.
5. I don't have any brand loyalty to Sony, but they do make pretty good stuff.
Here's some alternatives that won't fit in your wallet but that are indestructible:
Corsair Survivor
Iron Drive
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Never carry passwords to important sites with you. What if somebody stole your wallet?
As to the "what if patrol" talking about what if your wallet is stolen? Well you can "what if" all night and come up with crazy scenarios for every possible thing that could possibly happen. Ok for the stolen wallet crowd why not carry a dummy wallet and give that to the thief. What? You think after you hand it over they hang out for a minute to see what you've got in there? No they run off a couple blocks and I'm sure if they were mad enough to come back and "get you" (there's another "what if")for duping them with a fake wallet you would have had plenty of time to leave the area before it gets to that point.
I don't know, thoughts?........
1) Thief steals wallet, runs away, you call police.
2) Thief unsuccessfully tries to steal wallet, you improve anti-theft techniques.
3) Guy pulls you into a dark alley, you get held-up by the guy holding a weapon to any vital organ and either: 1) Just kills you on the spot and takes your stuff 2) Takes your stuff then runs away 3) Takes you hostage
4) You forgot where you placed your wallet with the USB in it.
5) USB somehow gets destroyed.
6) Data somehow becomes corrupt.
I dunno what else. Other than if you had some kind of impairment, anything is possible, it's just the chances of it happening is kinda tiny. So yeah any scenario you come up with should have a countermeasure. If the scenario was aliens abducting you then why need a countermeasure? They just abduct you then throw you into some random place in the world. They won't care about 2GB of data. It's possible, but unlikely.
PS. Dog tag around neck could be used to choke you to death, unless it was designed to break if excessive force is applied. But then you would lose it. Wrist tag recommended.
PPS. There is such a thing as a psychologically unstable thief you know. The guy could be so crazy you have a dog tag or something.
I agree, having that PI on a flash in your wallet, encrypted or not, sounds INSANE to me! There are thieves in every generation, and computer-savvy kids CAN and WILL try to break into a stolen flash, just for the challenge, if not whatever might be on it. Great idea for a safe-deposit box or trusted family member though, and a great instuctable!
Get a 12v power supply that plugs into a car cigarette lighter.
We were burgled at the beginning of February. They stole my cell phone, my computer, all my flash drives, my PDA, and a number of other things containing important information. Including car keys and wallet. No, it was not cheap to get the car rekeyed (go to a locksmith, not the dealer, if this happens to you), but that was the least of my problems.
I am self-employed, so with my phone, laptop, flash drives, and PDA gone, they also got all my work that had not made it to a recent backup. As a photographer, this doubly sucked, because I have joined the digital revolution and have no film backups. Fortunately I have an online email account and was able to rebuild some of my client records, but not all.
Just a few photos are on Flickr and Myspace but for the most part I lost all photos of family, friends, and inventory (since my last backup) when they stole the computer. Back. Up. Your. Photos.
I was prepared for a crash, not a theft... all my info was backed up here and there, my bookmarks on a flash drive with portable mozilla, etc. I also keep a paper log of my cell phone contacts but it had been a while since I printed them out. The phone I had accepted a memory card but it was a weird size (MMC) so I didn't have one. I replaced my phone with one that takes a miniSD, so now I have two -- one in the phone doing whatever it does, the other being kept somewhere safe.
For that matter, it wouldn't hurt to copy your phone book to one of your family member's SIM cards. You can choose not to see all those contacts in your phone book, but if your phone goes away, someone you presumably trust will have a copy of your phone book.
Fortunately they left the USB hard drives behind. I was able to recover some of my information, but the backup I had done in January turned out to be corrupt, and the one before that was from September (which is really sloppy on my part). I was able to reinstall software by emailing the companies I bought it from with my receipt information (yay, online email) and so be able to use the programs again.
While I could get back on my feet as fast as the shock of being robbed allowed, the permanent loss of personal information and work documents has taught me something very, very important:
Keep your backups OFFSITE.
We have gone through and scanned receipts and serial numbers and put hard copies of them in a notebook, as well as PDF on two flash drives. One drive is at the bank in a nice spanking new safe deposit box, while the other is here at the house. The bank is just down the street so it's easy to go over there with the laptop and copy over the information to the one that stays in the box. The other one stays with the laptop which now comes upstairs with me when I go to bed (we were home when our stuff was taken) and in the trunk of the car when we leave the house.
The idea of putting personal records on a flash drive and then carrying that around (encrypted or not) is just insane. However, putting them on a flash drive and making a couple of backup DVDs for your parents and trusted contacts to hold onto in the event of your demise is not a bad idea, especially in the case of irreplaceable photos.
When I was in school I kept a separate floppy of each class (way before flash drives!) and copied the class notes to the disc after every class. A couple of times that saved my butt -- once my laptop flew out of a jeep when it rolled, and another time (or two) when the hard drive crashed. I would have failed classes if not for the backups. I can't believe that I've gotten so lax about making sure that my important data doesn't get backed up.
So, your lists of things to keep copies of is really great, especially for people who live in weather incident prone locations (like me, I live in Oklahoma = tornadoes). Scanning things and keeping them as PDFs cuts down on space that would be wasted if the docs were kept as JPG files. Putting them on a flash drive means that you can easily update them. It would be better to also burn discs (at least 2) that can't accidentally get erased or crash.
I wouldn't bother to copy music, since you can download a new copy of just about anything you lose, but that's up to you. I had some music on my laptop but I had the CDs in the closet anyway, so no loss. But the idea of keeping a copy of tax forms, employment records, etc is an excellent idea, especially if your physical records are destroyed by fire, flood, theft, or rampaging hoardes of zombies.
Sorry to create to instructable within yours. I use this to create my own thumbdrive.
Great work making this instructable....used the same technique for several years.
However, security question matter in this. I like the Spiff73's idea of the µSD in the phone, but I only use the simplest and cheaper phones around, and mine does not have a card slot. I will certainly give it a though.
Another component of this security issue is if if case of an accident the paramedics or doctor can find your family contacts on your phone... see this link1 to see about the ICE inniciative and this link2 about the ITU recommendations.