I’m a fairly organised person, but if you would have seen my USB collection you would never have guessed.
It’s actually something that has bothered me for a long time. I could grab a drive the pile and I would have no idea what was on it. I knew that some had important stuff, but I hadn’t labelled them in any meaningful way.
So I finally decided to do something about it!
Last week I ordered a set of six Kingston DataTravelers with a USB-C type interface, and they arrived today. Type C really was a no-brainer, it’s the future and I’m able to use it for my computers, my phone and my iPad.
Since I was adding more drives to the pile, I decided to clear out some of what I already had. I had ten drives since before, most of different models and from different years. Barely any were labelled. Some had stuff on them that I forgot I even had. Everything I wanted to keep I’ve now organised and put on my NAS for actual long term storage. Out of all the drives I had, I decided to only keep three.
I’ve sorted what I have into a spreadsheet, where I’ve assigned each one a unique name and specific purpose. It looks like this:
| Label | Used for | Drive model | Capacity | Interface | File system | Encryption | Acquired | Formatted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| c64-id01 | Keepass password databases | Kingston DataTraveler 70 | 64 GB | USB-C 3.2 | exfat | no | 2025-06-03 | 2025-06-03 |
| c64-id02 | Private keys | Kingston DataTraveler 70 | 64 GB | USB-C 3.2 | ext4 | luks2 | 2025-06-03 | 2025-06-03 |
| c64-id03 | Mirror of c64-id02 | Kingston DataTraveler 70 | 64 GB | USB-C 3.2 | ext4 | luks2 | 2025-06-03 | 2025-06-03 |
| c64-id04 | Free | Kingston DataTraveler 70 | 64 GB | USB-C 3.2 | exfat | no | 2025-06-03 | 2025-06-03 |
| c64-id05 | Free | Kingston DataTraveler 70 | 64 GB | USB-C 3.2 | exfat | no | 2025-06-03 | 2025-06-03 |
| c64-id06 | Transient files | Kingston DataTraveler 70 | 64 GB | USB-C 3.2 | exfat | no | 2025-06-03 | 2025-06-03 |
| a32-id07 | Debian netinstall image | Kingston DataTraveler Exodia | 32 GB | USB-A 3.0 | fat32 | no | 2023-01-01 | 2025-06-03 |
| a32-id08 | Fedora Workstation image | Kingston DataTraveler Exodia | 32 GB | USB-A 3.0 | fat32 | no | 2023-01-01 | 2025-06-03 |
| a32-id09 | Arch image | Kingston DataTraveler Exodia | 32 GB | USB-A 3.0 | fat32 | no | 2023-01-01 | 2025-06-03 |
The drives are named systematically, and they’re labelled with these names so I never have to guess as to what they contain (or I can easily look up what they’re for without needing to plug them in and checking). The naming scheme I went for should be fairly self-explanatory, but the first letter denotes whether it’s type A or type C, the number denote the size in GB, followed by a unique identifier. Since I don’t label the drives with their actual content, it means I can change things without having to print new labels.
I’ve got my Keepass database on my NAS and in my cloud storage, but I sometimes find myself needing it where I don’t necessarily have access to those places. So now I have “c64-id01” clipped to my keyring, and I won’t have this issue again.
My private SSH and GPG keys are now backed up to offline media, which they were before too, but if you would have asked me on what USB I would not have been able to answer you.
I now have a drive specifically meant for temporary files, i.e. stuff I’m transferring from one computer to another but that I don’t want to remain on the USB afterwards. I don’t have to rummage through five different drives before finding an empty one.
Feels nice to have a system!