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).
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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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.
Sorry about the negativity from so many people.
You do what works for you.
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.
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.
Of course Ventoy and multiples ISO, but also a full copy of SDIO, it's maybe 30-40GB, but absolutely essential for Windows
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.
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.
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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
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
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.
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
Tails and another for storing random stuff, like a copy of documents when travelling.
Kingston DataTraveler Micro 3.1 128GB USB 3.0. I leave it on my keyring to trade movies/tv shows/music w friends 🏴☠️
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...
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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.
Kali
Cheers, currently grabbed Ubuntu, Fedora, GParted, and Kali.
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.
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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 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.
I carry an empty one, to make copies of movies I find on work computers.
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.
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.)
Is there such a thing as a Windows live environment? Once in a blue moon I need to boot into Windows, like when I need to reprogram my gaming mouse or something. I’d love to not have to maintain a separate partition on my OS drive that I use like once a year.
With the stock installer? Not really. However, technically the installer itself is a very, very minimal windows. Just open up a cmd (with Ctrl + F12 or smth I believe) and you can open notepad from there, meaning you have a graphical file "manager". And from there you can do things such as executing BIOS installers, which will actually work - even though the WM looks pretty weird, you will be able to use very simple programs just fine - such as cmd, or the Intel BIOS installer.