All,

Not to be braggin about my phsyical prowess, but I managed to do three pullups using a steel pipe threaded through three 3 foot strands of 110 lb dacron fishing line. The pullups are not the big deal, the dacron holding my 260 lb load while I carefully go up and down is the impressive part. This is like three pieces of kite string. The deal is it came out of my shoulder bag where I had it spooled up on a tongue depressor along with a bunch of duct tape and electrical tape. I strung the line over a rafter and did the pullups to show some locals. I wasn't sure it would take it, but it did fine. Paracord has its uses, but this dacron line is not that expensive, and it is quite handy. I spooled the line back up when I was done (I had to cut the knot off, darn it). Folks, this is just plain good stuff, and I can't understand why more of us don't have it in our PSKs.

Also, from a technological standpoint, anyone think of keeping a thumb drive, aka usb drive, aka flash disk in their BOB or PSK, with all kinds of useful data stored on it? A good 128mb drive is darned cheap, and I can certainly imagine where it might come in handy in certain scenarios. I keep one here, and it even has a scanned copy of my passport, my driver's license, and a few other choice items on it. If you prefer, you can encrypt all the data easy enough. It is worth considering.

Thumb drives are great - one is around my neck right now. For "static" data (birth certificates etc) I have a few CDs that I burned that are in my gear - I also have an OLD laptop stashed in one of my cases - don't care if that one gets wrecked

I scanned a copy of many important travel documents, including passport, credit cards (front & back) This is encrypted. Medical records and emergency contact info is in the simplest .doc file I can create and is NOT encrypted. My 128MB flashdrive cost $15.00, and hangs on a keychain.
I think this is a great idea, Benjamin.

Be careful, the simplest .doc isn't so simple. You have to have the same or newer version of microsoft word to be able to open that .doc. Save your important stuff in a standardized format, espically if your luck is like mine, the day I need something off of a flash drive would be the day someone has an old version of word and would't be able to open it. I keep images in plain old tif and most docs in plain text.

Mason line (nylon) is also impressive.

As far as keychain drives, I'd suggest the Lexar "Jump Drive" secure. This drive comes with encyption software that also partitions the drive into a "public" and "private" area. Another really cool drive is the Sandisk waterproof drive. Sandisk Waterproof Drive

Now, for a word on file formats.

The MS Word .doc format is NOT universal - but RTF and TXT are. PDF (Adobe Acrobat) documents are nearly universal.

As far as images - jpg and gif are universal, much smaller than tiff (or tif) and work fine..

BUT....

A scan of your documents is NOT NOT NOT a legal copy of your documents at all and is quite worthless in a situation where there is a need for an original document.

Unfortunately, this means that even if you have a marvelous stash of data on your key drive and your house burns, except as a reference to help you deal with the courts and all that, these scans are of little use. I speak from the experience of my home burning to the ground and having lost all the documents therein, which is why I have THREE fire safes now.

As far as medical data - human-readable data is what we need on the scene. I can assure you that we WON'T recognize or have the ability to read a USB drive if we need to pry you out of a car - but is we see a medic-alert tag, we can and will look at that.

I'd go with txt and jpg. After several too many years doing end-user tech support I've found that almost anyone can figure out how to open those formats and the people that can't figure it out would also never figure out how use a flash drive anyway so the point is moot with them. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

The only reason I suggested tiff over jpg or gif is because tiff uses a lossless compression where jpg and such are lossy. So if you edit and save, then reopen and edit and save a jpg a few times you loose a bit more data each time. Think of it as copying a tape (analog) where each edit the quility suffers slightly or a CD (digital) where it stays the same each time and the only loss was in the initial sampleing.
Fax machines use tiff is their internal file format also so its one of the olders and most widely used. There are others such, PNG is loseless IIRC.
There are also some patents and licensing issues with some of the compression used in some of the other formats which means they may not be around someday in the future if some company decided they want $ for their IP.

Anything more complex that text or tiff I have switched to open office since its just a zipped xml file which can be unzipped and modified as plain text, so even if the original program that created the file cannot be obtained you can still use the data. Microsoft Office the format is protected so you are forbidden to reverse engineer it which means in a few years if they drop support for an older version (like they did with Visio) then you won't be able to open those files.

What you say is true, but I do not see it as being an issue. If I carried one of these things around, it would hold such things as copies of insurance papers, deeds, etc. I simply cannot imagine having to "edit" such documents.

On the other hand, what you say is very valid for family photos where you might want to retouch them or remove redeye.

JPG files also capable of compressing a LOT more. I do not know how well a B/W document might compress, but for a photo, using a lossless compression would reduce file size by approximately 1/2, and JPEG could reduce to 1/10.

Also, JPEG is such a universal standard, that I cannnot imagine not being able to open it. At the very least, any browser can open it.

And your comments on Office are quite true. But I would not want to have to look at XML data with my eyeball. You could do it, but why when you don't have to. Actually a zip of an HTML file would be perfect, as you could keep formatting, and embed graphics and such.

Just my $0.02

If you want nonlossy image formats, PNG. Most browsers can handle them. Should be able to handle them, they are the middle child of the Internet's standard protocals going back 8, 10 years.

I EDC my beat up, slightly scuzzy looking Memorex 256. I know thay have a bad rep, but mine never gave me a bit of trouble, and I like the ability to copy protect my stuff. I carry the basics for my job on it (site liscenced copy of Macafee, some printer drivers, stinger, etc), my contact information, and a scan of my living will. I don't figure that it will be looked at in the field, but it might be at the hospital. Particularly when everyone who is on the medical data/phone number card I carry in the wallet knows what is there. The back of the card also says "LIVING WILL ON USB DRIVE" in big block letters, incase they can't find anyone on the list. :P

There is currently some discission in the open source world about jpg using a patented compresion routine so it has the potential to not be around years from now. Its also easier to convert from a loseless format such as tif or png to jpg that to convert a jpg back to a tif or png since you can't restore the lost data in the jpg. Also if you were ever to loose the original document you may need the scanned copy. My scanned documnents are backups for the paper and I keep copies in several places and keep them all in the same format, much simpler than having to convert from loseless on the hdd to lossy on the flash drive to save a few bytes, then if you loose the loseless all you have left is the lossy. I work in IT and have to be aware of DR type of plans so I look for the worst case. My flash drive is a last ditch backup of my absolute most important docs so if soimeone steals the laptop, the house burns down melting the backup cd's and the bank gets robbed and the backup cd's in the safe deposit box are taken the flash has the most important <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I was surprised to learn that tif was the most standard dating back before jpg and gif (both of which were created to compress for slow modems not) you can view it on anything back to commodore and atari systems if you really wanted to <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
I wouldn't want to look at XML either but its not much more complicated than HTML and its still possible at least to look at the XML of an open office spreadsheet where you can't look at the internals of a Microsoft Office Spreadsheet (though Microsoft is supposed to be going to XML with office but they are also incorporating a lot of DRM stuff which coule prevent you from looking inside as well). Again the XML is the last ditch effort just like the PSK the flash drive is kept in. HTML isn't easy for things liek spreadsheets such as my gear inventory; tables in HTML just are not complex enough.