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 back and forth.

Whereas USB flash drives proceed to be accessible available on the market 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 rationale for this quirky, enigmatic conduct of mine? Because it seems, USB sticks are the proper antidote to as we speak’s always-connected world of digital dopamine and big-tech over-dependency. Thumb drives are compact, inexpensive, offline-friendly, and extremely malleable.

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

Retro ROM information

Nostalgic leisure that hardly takes up any house

The fantastic thing about old-school video video games is that they hardly take up any house. The common Atari 2600 ROM file, for instance, ranges anyplace from 4KB to 64KB, which is to say that hundreds of those retro games might be packed right into a drive with out making a dent in accessible storage capability. The identical goes for arcade ROMs, and even residence online game consoles by means of 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 deal with exploitative gameplay loops. To bypass this, whereas additionally making certain I obtain a gradual 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 a number of 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 as we speak’s internet-powered info age, we take it without any consideration that we are able to inquire for particulars and how-tos on absolutely anything and every thing underneath the solar with out lifting a finger. This democratization of data is barely accelerating with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and enormous language fashions (LLMs), nevertheless it has an Achilles’ Heal: its wholehearted reliance on the World Huge Internet.

Whereas extraordinarily unlikely, it is all the time a chance that web connectivity might be misplaced as a consequence of 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 clever mantra of “anticipate the perfect and put together for the worst.”

A First Help 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 group of First Help guides and sources. Whereas unlikely to ever be wanted, I can sleep soundly at night time understanding that I carry with me archival information of methods 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 info doc with specifics by myself well being standing. Medical ID is a characteristic built into modern mobile operating systems like iOS, iPadOS, and Android, however having a secondary backup accessible 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) supply free and open-source computing environments that may be loaded up through a bootable USB drive, together with common choices like Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian.

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

Do not depend on server-side companies

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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 max compatibility throughout numerous working methods and platforms. Apart from customary emergency companies numbers, my doc contains contact cellphone numbers of shut relations, in addition to some further sources like native taxi corporations, locksmiths, and numerous important service suppliers.

The very fact of the matter is that, as a consequence of our modern-day reliance on smartphones, most of us hardly bear in mind cellphone numbers by coronary heart anymore. The issue is that the majority of us save our contacts through the cloud, which ends up in privateness issues, safety vulnerabilities, and the potential of by accident being locked out of an account and shedding entry outright. Having cellphone numbers archived on my USB stick might sound superfluous on the floor, nevertheless it simply would possibly turn out to be useful at some point, and I would quite be secure than sorry.