here is my encrypted directory structure:

auto/
- pics of my truck and wifes car.
- scan of vehicle registrations for above.
- scan of vehicle insurance for above.
- pdf repair manual for my truck.

bins/
- binaries of applications, e.g. Acrobat, Truecrypt, EchoLink, Firefox Portable, PortaPutty, etc

financial/
- prior year tax return
- scan of bank account statement.
- scan of employer paystub.
- scan of employer 401K account.
- scan of Fidelity brokerage account statement.
- scan of one each credit card statements.

firearms/
- scan of any transaction records proving i'm the lawful owner.
- pics of weapons for insurance purposes.
- name, address, & number of a couple of FFL's.
- PDF versions of teardown/cleaning manuals.

gps/
- PDF manuals for my Etrex and Magellan RM800.
- latest application to download new firmware to gps's in case of corruption.

ham/
- scan of amateur radio license.
- scan of RACES/ARES cards.
- pics of rigs for insurance purposes.
- field expedient antenna construction articles.
- PDF user manuals for VX170, IC24AT, IC703+, V8000, FT8800, etc
- FRS/GMRS/MURS frequencies.
- various frequency reference guides for local police/fire/govt.

house/
- scan of deed.
- scans of mortgage paperwork.
- scans of any township docs (tax assessment, etc).

insurance/
- scan of homeowner's insurance policy.
- pictures of items which have non-trivial replacement costs (e.g., wife's engagement ring).
- scans of appraisals for any items which have non-trivial replacement costs.
- scan of life insurance policy
- scan of will

maps/
- East coast, state, and county maps in PDF format.
- above, annotated with PDF postnotes regarding "places of interest".

medical/
- PDF of FM4-25.11, basic military first aid.
- PDF for proper application of a tourniquet in the field.
- various other first aid reference manuals.

numbers/
- scan of household address book, includes all family/friends/etc.
- PDF of number directory at work.
- text file with contents of cellphone memory.

passports/
- scans of my and my wife's passports.

pics/
- family pictures.
- parents / siblings pictures.

shtf/
- SHTF planning documents
- PDF survival guides, desert/blizzard/shelter building/etc
- 14 part PDF survival document from WHO
> 1 - Cleaning and disinfecting wells.pdf
> 2 - Cleaning and disinfecting boreholes.pdf
> 3 - Cleaning and disinfecting water storage tanks.pdf
> 4 - Rehabilitating small-scale water distributions systems.pdf
> 5 - Emergency treatment of drinking water.pdf
> 6 - Rehabilitating water treatment works.pdf
> 7 - Solid waste management in emergencies.pdf
> 8 - Disposal of dead bodies.pdf
> 9 - Minimum water quantity.pdf
> 10 - Essential hygiene messages.pdf
> 11 - How to measure chlorine residual.pdf
> 12 - Delivering safe water.pdf
> 13 - Emergency sanitation - planning.pdf
> 14 - Emergency sanitation - technical.pdf

wallet/
- scans (front and back) of everything in my wallet, incl credit cards, DL, NJ FID, social security card, employer ID, healthcare cards, etc. note that it's important to scan the back as there is always useful info there –– for example, generally the "report lost/stolen card" contact number for your credit card company is on the back.

––––––

anyway, that's what i have on my 1GB USB key. my Truecrypt file is 400MB big, and i keep a copy of that same file on my home PC, my wife's laptop, my work computer, and obviously on my USB key on my person. once a year i snail-mail a burned CD to my parents out in PA, and tell them to put it in with their important papers.

forgot to say that you should dupe everything for your wife/SO/GF

Quoted:
Secure it with
www.truecrypt.org/
-Foxxz

+ 1,048,576.

the HUGE ADVANTAGE with using TrueCrypt over a "hardware encrypted USB drive" is that you can store, copy, transmit, duplicate, etc etc your TrueCrypt vault (= a file) as many times as you want, in as many places as you want, on as many types of media as you want.

in other words, you fell into the water, your USB key is ruined?

no problem, your TrueCrypt vault is also on your PC's hard drive at home, on your PC at work, on another USB flash drive in your BOB, on another USB flash drive in your BOV center console, on a CD at your parents house in a drawer, on a CD in a safe deposit box in a bank, on a networked server fileshare on the other side of the world, etc etc etc.

2 is 1, 1 is none.
having one HW-encrypted store of your stuff is a single point of failure.

ar-jedi

ETA, from a prior post

Quoted:
FYI is there any advantage to the thumb drive over a couple of CD's?

the USB drive is easily updatable as new info is found/old info is changed. the USB key is easier to hang around your neck, or stuff in your BOB/pack. but keep reading...

Quoted:
Can you set a password for the thumb drive?

don't encrypt the entire USB key. instead, see my link above for TrueCrypt software (open source, free, very good). use it to make an encrypted container, and that's where your docs will go into.

ETA:
the main reason you don't want to encrypt the entire key is that in order to decrypt the key on some random computer you found, you would first need to install the decryption software. which you would get from where? so there is a chicken-vs-egg problem.

hence, make a container within the USB key; encrypt that. OUTSIDE THE CONTAINER, place the truecrypt installer application AND use the "Make Traveller" function from within truecrypt. the latter will add all the necessary bits to the USB key to unencrypt the container without having to actully install truecrypt on the PC. and, having the actual installer application is just backup.

don't make the container larger than about 600-650MB. why not? keep reading...

Quoted:
Is it EMP proof?

no one knows. so, in true ARFCOM fashion, "get both". make a CD copy once every 6 months or so, and perhaps keep a second USB key in an RF proof box somewhere with the rest of your electronic SHTF stuff. nevertheless, if there is an EMP strong enough to take out your USB key, it probably means you have huge problems forthcoming!

as noted way way way above, i periodically make a copy of my USB key onto a CD, and send it off to my parents in another state (aka cheap offsite storage). this is why you should not make the encrypted container larger than 600-650MB –– otherwise it will not fit onto a CD.

ar-jedi

Quoted:
There was a really good blog written by a guy down in NO before and after Katrina, but I can't remember the address.

He mentioned storing data on a thumbdrive for just such an emergency.

Quoted:


Here's the link:

The place with no name

Quoted:

http://archive.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=10&f=17&t=608288
http://archive.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=123&t=460965
http://archive.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=123&t=496737
http://archive.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=123&t=504485
http://archive.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=10&f=17&t=612892
http://archive.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=10&f=17&t=609433

Quoted:
Is there some trick that I can use to find these threads?  All of them dump me at the main archive page.

Quoted:
micro SD flash card, you could load your true crypt file onto it

Quoted:


you'd still have to carry a micro SD card reader around –– they aren't std on every PC by a long shot.

ar-jedi

Quoted:
There is also a product out there called PING (partition image not ghost) that allows you to do a it copy of your entire hard drive.  It essentially takes a snapshot of the drive and puts it in an 'image' file (a group of files) so that you can write it to a new hard drive, etc.  Beats a backup as it takes ALL of your hard drive info, not just backup files and incrementals.  

Quoted:


i looked around but i can't seem to find a 500GB USB flash card.  

ar-jedi

Quoted:
So, what woult the "Image" of a 500 BG HD relate to in a (JPG???) file?  How much data could you cram into an image and have it be reliable?

Quoted:
Trying to use the KISS concept.

AR-Jedi.... Question.... What's your reason for encrypting all the "non-personal" stuff in your file structure?

Quoted:
medical/
- PDF of FM4-25.11, basic military first aid.
- PDF for proper application of a tourniquet in the field.
- various other first aid reference manuals.

shtf/
- SHTF planning documents
- PDF survival guides, desert/blizzard/shelter building/etc
- 14 part PDF survival document from WHO
> 1 - Cleaning and disinfecting wells.pdf
> 2 - Cleaning and disinfecting boreholes.pdf
> 3 - Cleaning and disinfecting water storage tanks.pdf
> 4 - Rehabilitating small-scale water distributions systems.pdf
> 5 - Emergency treatment of drinking water.pdf
> 6 - Rehabilitating water treatment works.pdf
> 7 - Solid waste management in emergencies.pdf
> 8 - Disposal of dead bodies.pdf
> 9 - Minimum water quantity.pdf
> 10 - Essential hygiene messages.pdf
> 11 - How to measure chlorine residual.pdf
> 12 - Delivering safe water.pdf
> 13 - Emergency sanitation - planning.pdf
> 14 - Emergency sanitation - technical.pdf

Quoted:
compress then encrypt, or visa versa. not sure which way is better.

(ronin)$ wget http://www.yahoo.com/

––02:19:50––  http://www.yahoo.com/

           => `index.html'

Resolving www.yahoo.com... 69.147.76.15

Connecting to www.yahoo.com|69.147.76.15|:80... connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Length: 9,490 (9.3K) [text/html]



100%[====================================>] 9,490         ––.––K/s



02:19:51 (373.79 KB/s) - `index.html' saved [9490/9490]



(ronin)$ crypt < index.html > index.html.crypt

Enter key:



(ronin)$ ls -sl index.html index.html.crypt

  24 -rw-r––r––   1 ar-jedi      staff       9490 Mar 29 02:12 index.html

  24 -rw-r––r––   1 ar-jedi      staff       9490 Mar 29 02:20 index.html.crypt



(ronin)$ gzip -9 index.html ; gzip -l index.html.gz

         compressed        uncompressed  ratio uncompressed_name

               2103                9490  78.1% index.html



(ronin)$ gzip -9 index.html.crypt ; gzip -l index.html.crypt.gz

         compressed        uncompressed  ratio uncompressed_name

               9530                9490  -0.1% index.html.crypt

Quoted:
then leave a .exe file to load it onto the host pc, unless you load it to run from the USB.  
also known as a ZIP or Tar file

Quoted:
Question.
If I am correct, the portable applications from http://portableapps.com/apps are installed directly on your usb drive. This allows you to use those programs from your usb drive regardless if they are installed on the host computer.
But there is no such "portable" equivalent for TrueCrypt (i.e. doesn't require TrueCrypt on the host computer)? If the only computer available during SHTF is some public-use computer (which you have no administrator rights), you would be out of luck accessing your TrueCrypt encrypted data, right?
In that situation, would an encrypted USB drive like IronKey be better?
Sorry if I am missing something. Thanks techno gurus.

Quoted:

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=truecrypt-portable

You can put the Truecrypt app on your USB drive. (obviously you need to store it outside of the actual TC volume).

Quoted:
Mac OSX and Linux/Unix are another story, as they enforce Admin ("sudoers") much more strictly.

Quoted:
You can also put the USB drive in a tube vault from county comm if you're worried about damaging it.