Two USB Thumbdrives Needed for Business Travel

I use the same exact backup system. An external drive, a thumb drive, and a laptop hard drive.

Especially since your traveling, consider encrypting your one or more drives with Truecrypt. Its easy and it works. You can encrypt an entire drive or part of a drive. You can even encrypt your entire laptop, including the operating system at startup, but I don't go that far. Just my external drives.

Use encryption on the thumb,with waterproof casing,and keep it well hidden. I decided to test the housing of an old 1G thumb from the company that I recently bought a 16G from. After leaving the 1G at the bottom of my shower. Taking it kiting, inside my board shorts, the drive worked without fail after I took it home.

Internet cafes are potential danger spots. I never leave my computer unattended. About 10 years ago, I accidently left a browser open while using the restroom. The attendant sent rude SEND ALL email.

I've been using Truecrypt to encrypt my entire laptop's HDD plus every external drive I own since 2007. It's wonderful knowing that someone may steal my equipment, but they'll never have my data.

Now that I travel with someone full-time (my wife), I keep an external HDD in her pack, one in mine (plus laptop in mine) plus critical backups to the Web. In Peru and in the USA I've got large external drives that are unencrypted (in the event that something happens to me) that are info and photo-dumped on each time I pass through that country.

Your 1s and 0s are volatile, and should be treated as such.