Regarding Flash Drive Usage
I low key hate these things actually.
Long time readers will recall that since receiving my AARP card I’ve been alternating getting in touch with my inner curmudgeon and putting ChatGPT to work as my frisky twentysomething intern. Now that 2024 has undeniably arrived I’ve put it off as long as I can.
I am rotating out my flash drives. That’s a quick sample of the current fleet.
What you see here is:
An Identiv FIDO2 key that’s not well supported where I need.
a microSD to USB-A reader.
a 8GB Kingston USB3.
A microSD to SD adapter that lingers solely to keep a microSD card.
One USB2 and one USB3 drive.
These all have a mix of Ventoy, one or more ISO files for operating systems, and Age encrypted backups of … stuff. The goal is being able to get back to work if my house goes up in a wildfire the way several thousand did in Santa Rosa a few years ago. But now that I’ve got Ubuntu Budgie, Proxmox, TAILS, and Qubes … 8GB was never a lot, and now it’s untenable to restore from something that size.
So I did some post Christmas shopping. This made me mildly annoyed tbh.
The old heavy duty aluminum USB3 drives were part of a quintet I bought five years ago. Two of them died just outside the ninety day warranty period and another one flaked out earlier this year. I buy data center grade SSDs and helium filled NAS drives for my workstations and servers. There’s no way to duplicate that spending for quality with thumb drives, it’s all the same two or three chip makers providing silicon to a legion of low cost high volume players. It’s storage fast food, basically.
The aluminum bodies are good, that part lasts and lasts, even riding on a key chain. I just wish the stuff inside them was equally sturdy. These five new Mosdart 64GB thumb drives are starting a burn in period. I’m going to exercise them fully on a daily basis and if any of them are still working come the start of next month I might trust them to hold some data.
They’re all going to be duplicates and this is where they’re going.
Key ring.
Random low key hiding spot in the house.
A friend I see every couple months.
[REDACTED]
This is all part of what I started in Continuity Planning. Did you read What Hunts You? Have you started to internalize the discipline of looking at your stuff the way a bad actor would? Here’s what I’m thinking as I do this in terms of adversaries.
Mother Nature tries to roast us annually and drowning is possible, too.
Burglar, mugger, etc. A thief who cares not for data.
Corporate sneak & peek team.
Rotten ass Dallas FBI field office contrives probable cause for a raid.
There’s a performance artist I used to know who scored himself a five year prison term back in 2012. He lost every bit of his data in a famously livestreamed raid and was basically defenseless - reality was what the prosecutor said it was. If that last scenario ever comes to pass for me, my stuff is neatly cataloged, already off site, and I did a stint servicing the federal public defenders. I have a LOT of questions for which I need answers, and all I need is that one phone call to set it all in motion.
Untested Backups:
Is your backup process untested? If so, you don’t HAVE a backup, you just have a theory. Once I get a bit more work done in this area I will do the following:
Keeping one thumb drive, all computers, phones, storage goes in a “box”.
Simulate new burner with an old one that’s been wiped.
Boot ratty old laptop with bare disk using thumb drive.
Install all the things, make sure I can get into everything.
I think I can already do this in terms of storage but I am concerned about the stuff that insists on being bound to a carrier cell number, as opposed to Google Voice. I’ve started researching what it’ll take to back up a SIM but since that’s a step into skills from The Fraud Zone™ it’s slow going.
My IRL restore scenario would be a slightly panicked call to that one person who isn’t afraid to flip up the lid on their war chest. I would ask for a new Google Pixel 8 for GrapheneOS and a Minimal Qubes Laptop, then I’m right back to work, albeit in a constrained fashion. My minimum these days really is a pair of Xeon workstations and a couple 4k monitors.
Conclusion:
At the risk of being repetitive, is your backup process untested?
Well, is it?
You already know what I’m gonna say …