5 helpful issues I will by no means delete from my trusty USB stick

Again earlier than the times of cloud-based storage suppliers and miniature exterior SSDs, I, like most others round me, relied on the common-or-garden USB stick to hold my digital information from side to side.

Whereas USB flash drives proceed to be out there in the marketplace in 2025, their heyday has lengthy since receded into the annals of tech historical past. With this in thoughts, family and friends are perplexed that I proceed to hold round a singular USB stick in my backpack to this very day.

The explanation for this quirky, enigmatic habits of mine? Because it seems, USB sticks are the right antidote to right now’s always-connected world of digital dopamine and big-tech over-dependency. Thumb drives are compact, reasonably priced, offline-friendly, and extremely malleable.

Listed here are 5 surprising issues I all the time carry round with me on a devoted USB stick, and that I do not plan on eradicating from my each day carry anytime quickly.

Retro ROM information

Nostalgic leisure that hardly takes up any house

The great thing about old-school video video games is that they hardly take up any house. The common Atari 2600 ROM file, for instance, ranges wherever from 4KB to 64KB, which is to say that 1000’s of those retro games will be packed right into a drive with out making a dent in out there storage capability. The identical goes for arcade ROMs, and even residence online game consoles by till roughly the fifth or sixth era of {hardware} platforms.

I discover most trendy mobile games to be distracting, with their ads, their pay-to-play monetization schemes, their reliance on an lively web connection, and their give attention to exploitative gameplay loops. To avoid this, whereas additionally guaranteeing I obtain a gentle provide of nostalgia within the course of, I all the time carry a library of retro gaming ROMs on my USB stick (in addition to just a few backups of PC and Android emulator program installers for good measure).

A survival information

For if and when the web goes down

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In right now’s internet-powered data age, we take it as a right that we are able to inquire for particulars and how-tos on absolutely anything and the whole lot underneath the solar with out lifting a finger. This democratization of data is simply accelerating with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and huge language fashions (LLMs), however it has an Achilles’ Heal: its wholehearted reliance on the World Vast Internet.

Whereas extraordinarily unlikely, it is all the time a chance that web connectivity could possibly be misplaced resulting from pure disasters, malicious actors, geopolitical disputes, and even whole warfare. As such, I’ve taken the precaution of downloading a compilation of survival information PDF information onto my private USB flash drive, to align with the smart mantra of “anticipate the most effective and put together for the worst.”

A First Assist information

A possible lifesaver when in a pinch

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Offline survival guides aren’t the one factor I insist on carrying round with me: in the identical vein, I’ve additionally gone forward and stashed my USB thumb drive with a set of First Assist guides and assets. Whereas unlikely to ever be wanted, I can sleep soundly at night time realizing that I carry with me archival information of tips on how to deal with wounds, the sorts of medicines that work together poorly with others, and extra.

Moreover, my USB stick carries with it a devoted medical data doc with specifics by myself well being standing. Medical ID is a function built into modern mobile operating systems like iOS, iPadOS, and Android, however having a secondary backup out there on a flash drive provides that little little bit of further reassurance that I am significantly keen on.

A bootable OS installer

An remoted setting to work from

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Talking of working methods, USB thumb drives are the perfect medium for carrying round bootable set up media. Microsoft offers its own Home windows 11 installer within the type of a Media Creation Instrument executable, however I are likely to desire the third-party Tiny11 for its smaller, bloat-free construct of the desktop OS. Alternatively, numerous Linux distributions (distros) provide free and open-source computing environments that may be loaded up through a bootable USB drive, together with in style choices like Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian.

There are a number of the reason why somebody would possibly need to carry round a bootable USB drive. For me personally, as a lover of all issues expertise and software program, I merely wish to mess around with new Linux distros and other OS images for the enjoyable of it with out having to leap by the hoops of dual-booting my PC.

Do not depend on server-side providers

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Lastly, positioned regionally on my private USB stick is an emergency contacts doc, saved as a textual content file (.txt) for optimum compatibility throughout numerous working methods and platforms. Except for normal emergency providers numbers, my doc contains contact telephone numbers of shut relations, in addition to some further assets like native taxi firms, locksmiths, and numerous important service suppliers.

The very fact of the matter is that, resulting from our modern-day reliance on smartphones, most of us hardly bear in mind telephone numbers by coronary heart anymore. The issue is that almost all of us save our contacts through the cloud, which ends up in privateness issues, safety vulnerabilities, and the potential of unintentionally being locked out of an account and dropping entry outright. Having telephone numbers archived on my USB stick might sound superfluous on the floor, however it simply would possibly come in useful someday, and I would relatively be secure than sorry.