As much as I love the convenience of keeping my important data safe in the cloud, there’s still a lingering fear in my head — what if the cloud or my internet connection fails me? It has happened to me at least a few times, which is why I am always adamant about keeping a fail-safe that is actually reliable.

In this regard, good old physical media will never fail me; that is why I keep a cohort of USB drives as a safety net in case anything goes wrong. Now this backup plan doesn’t just involve keeping my personal data safe; I also use these drives as security tools or as bootable drives for when I want to switch to another OS.

Some of my files are too sensitive to back up in the cloud

No drive, no access

I prefer to access my data without using a third-party service, which is why I always store my personal and sensitive data locally. There are too many caveats to storing data in the cloud, like terms of service changes or your account getting suspended, that can lock you ​​​​​​out of your data. Even locally, I take extra measures to safeguard my data against malware and hacks. One of the ways I do so is by locking it behind a physical key for my PC, and for that, I keep a thumb drive on me.

Now, transforming your USB drive into a physical key doesn’t take much aside from software to encrypt your data and lock it to the drive. The one I recommend is USB Raptor, which can lock your file or the LAN on multiple PCs and works with pretty muchall drives. To configure:

1. Download USB Raptor.
2. Install the software and accept the EULA when opening the program.
3. To configure, insert the USB drive and select it in Advanced Configuration.
4. Create a k3y, an authorization file stored on your thumb drive, to access the file you want to lock on your PC.

USB Raptor also lets you create a backup password in case you lose the USB drive. This would make your system secure on a physical level.

OS

Windows

Pricing model

Free

A free open-source Windows utility that lets you lock and unlock your PC by using any USB flash drive as a physical key to protect your system from casual access.

I keep a bootable Linux drive in case Windows fails me

A secondary bootable drive can be a lifesaver

I’ve been a Windows user for most of my life, but the recent advancement and popularity of Linux incline me to try out the OS. Even though Linux can never replace Windows for me, the argument goes both ways because there are some tasks that only Linux can do for me.

This is why I have a bootable Linux OS in my drawer. I admit I mess around with my system more often than not, and if everything fails, I can always boot into Linux and try to recover Windows. This one time, I used my drive on a friend’s setup to convert their storage from MBR to GPT to install Windows 11.

Not just Linux, you can also create a Windows 11 bootable drive for your Mac device, for instance, where Apple’s OS fails to deliver a task only meant for Microsoft to complete. Or, you can use the USB drive to safely browse the internet without the fear of getting tracked by installing Tails, a Debian-based Linux distro that runs through the Tor network and completely masks your location and identity.

I always keep a Windows installer on standby

Fresh install just a drive away

I love building PCs and have assembled several builds for family and friends over a decade and a half. I think this is partly why I always have a Windows setup on one of my USB drives. I have carried on that tradition to date now, and even if the need rarely arrives, I still keep a Windows 11 setup USB drive as a backup, and I’ve already got to use it twice in the last year — one time when my Windows 11 broke and when the 2H2 update first debuted which was pretty lackluster, and it hurt performance, prompting me to roll back to an earlier version from the setup I have in my USB drive.

The part most cloud services miss

While cloud services preserve your actual data, most of them skip out entirely on the metadata, which, in simpler terms, is the descriptive information embedded in your file. Depending on the file type, it can cover a lot, including: file name/size/time, lens, focus mode, aperture, original capture data for photos; codec, resolution, GPS data, scene data for videos; file permissions/timestamps, dependencies, build info, commit history, merge history, and more for projects/code.

Protecting metadata is essential for professionals who want to keep track of their projects; without it, they’re pretty much lost. For a photographer or a videographer, metadata would help track the exact original timeline of the work and protect the originality. For a coder, it would improve collaboration with new team members and debug much more effectively.

As a professional freelancer who juggles multiple projects at a time, I create a snapshot of my projects at least once every couple of months, and for video and photos, I use ExifTool, a standard command-line utility that works across various file types.

To create a metadata snapshot of your media, follow these steps:

1. Download ExifTool.
2. Open Command Prompt as an admin.
3. Now, go to the directory where all your photos might be or the file location itself and paste it to your USB drive: exiftool -r -a -g1 -json "D:\Media" > "E:\full_metadata_backup.json"
4. I also recommend checking if the backup exists, and to do so, type this command in Command Prompt dir "E:\*.json"
5. Now, in a case where your data is stripped of its metadata, you can paste it back via this command, exiftool -r -TagsFromFile "Originals\%f.%e" "-all:all" "Stripped"

For exporting code/project metadata, the steps are as follows:

1. Download Git Bash, a CMD-like command-line interpreter that provides a Unix-like environment and is essential to back up metadata for code.
2. Go to your project directory cd path/to/project
3. Now, export data for the code/project by this command: find . -type f -exec sha256sum {} \; > checksums.txt
4. If using Git, export the commit history via git log --oneline > git_history.txt
5. Now, copy the created files to your USB drive, and you’ll have a snapshot of your metadata.

This metadata can now be used to verify the integrity of your code, recover timestamps, and preserve history in general.

Physical media still has a place alongside the cloud

USB drives are indispensable, and beyond backups, there are many ways to repurpose a thumb drive, such as building a private LLM locally or using it as extra storage for your TV. Do keep in mind that the data on your USB drive is slowly degrading over time since these drives also have a limited shelf life, so I’d recommend not using an older one for sensitive data or keeping it as a physical lock.