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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

I used to think that if I was ever in a plane crash I'd want to save my laptop, so now I've gotten into the habit of carrying a small SSD drive with me whenever I travel. I use it to image the hard drive on my laptop. I keep it in a ziploc bag in my pocket. Other than that, I never take anything with me on a trip that I'm not willing to lose. That way if I am ever in a plane crash, the drive, already in my pocket, is all I need to save from among my belongings. Keeping it in a ziploc means it will be OK even if we go down over water. (And, of course, I've got backups at home too.)

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You might want to get a better bag if you're worried about submersion. Ziplocs are not necessarily completely water tight out of the box, and they degrade pretty quickly in use (like the constant rubbing that'll be produced by carrying it in your pocket all the time). Wad up some toilet paper in an old ziploc or two and submerge them for a few minutes, then check the paper...you might not like the results. Consider a dry bag like rafters/kayakers use.

A proper dry bag won't fit in my pocket. I do use a fresh ziploc for every trip, but there's a limit to what I'm willing to do to mitigate this risk. I also have backups at home, so if I ever do lose my backup to water that will be inconvenient but not catastrophic.

"there's a limit to what I'm willing to do to mitigate risk..."

This is a troll right? Plan for a plane crash but not willing to use proper waterproof storage?

> This is a troll right?

Nope.

> Plan for a plane crash but not willing to use proper waterproof storage?

Yep. A ziploc bag costs me about a nickel, takes me five seconds to acquire (because I have them in stock), and fits neatly into my pocket, which is a really important feature for this use case. I don't know of any "proper waterproof storage" with those features. It's possible I'm being foolish, but I'm not trolling.

Lots more reasons why you might loose a laptop while traveling, it's not a dedicated plan for plane crashes.

Fair enough. There are dry bags that are cell phone sized, though, which I would guess is about the same size as your drive.

I always fly with my passport in my pocket for similar reason.

I am fine with losing all tech though, with everything being encrypted and backups with anything important elsewhere that seems like a minor inconvenience.

A better reason is fears of theft. Especially in terminals, your bag is much more likely to get stolen.

If you get off a plane crash alive, your laptop will be the last thing on your mind

You're kidding right? Plane crash? Over water?

You'd be lucky to survive, who cares about your hard drive.

People survive plane crashes, even over water, all the time.

This is to save your few hours of works while on widi-less plane? Or do you not use cloud drives?

That's right, I don't use cloud drives. Where I travel, high speed internet is often not available. Also, I don't trust cloud providers. "The cloud" is a synonym for "someone else's computer." I want my data on hardware that I own and control.

Why don't you just encrypt the data before uploading?

Because that doesn't solve the problem of not having an internet connection. Also, it's not that I don't trust providers not to read my data, it's that I don't trust them not to lose it. I have no way of knowing what goes on behind the scenes at a cloud provider. For all I know, they are one hardware failure (or one financial failure) away from losing my data.

They have obligations to their corporate customers which would require them to have architecture in place to protect against that kind of scenario better than any home user could on their own.

Plus you could hedge your bets by just backing up to multiple providers (i.e. Google Drive, Onedrive, Dropbox). What are the chances that all three would fail simultaneously?

I use a drive cloud provider (pcloud) which I backup with a backup provider (backblaze).

The advantage of using providers is that they have paid employee to take care of everyday operations. I'll argue that using 2 different provider protects me from losing all my data if one of them screws up royally, or their business go under. Also, this is my dog-fooding of the solution I recommend to my non-tech family and friends.

What if you get struck by lightning? Better make that a faraday cage ziploc bag.

Planning for a plane crash is probably the most ridiculous, insane thing one can do. There is a benefit trade-off of preparation time and being worried all the time. It bothers me when I see people always in “guarded” mode - these people seem to never live freely, enjoy the moment and they constantly worry about someone stealing their wallets or their car. I had a manager at work who would steering lock with a giant steel rod on his brand new Mercedes which has a number of safety/anti-theft systems.

I go to the other extreme which is probably also insane. I never use a phone case, put a leather cover on my passport or any of these things. I’ve realized that I have so many years to live and enjoy the products as they’re designed. If I were to buy a Ferrari, you bet your bottom dollar I am driving the shit out of it.

Edit: I want to clarify: I wear seatbelts, safety glasses (even when frying something in the kitchen, yes your kitchen is essentially a chemical lab with a Bunsen burner), sunscreen, regular health screenings, go to the dentist, shower, etc. I think people are totally missing my point if your argument is about ignoring safety, sanitation, etc.

I always make sure my shoes are on for takeoff and landing, ensure that I know which emergency exit I will use, and attempt to evaluate my best path to that exit. I don’t feel like it’s a waste to plan for the remote possibility of a life threatening situation.

I’m not advocating ignoring fundamental aspects of safety, wearing proper PPE, evacuation information, exits, etc. You should be aware of them and use them.

Actually that stuff also constitutes a poor cost benefit ratio. The chance that everything goes wrong in exactly the right way where it’s useful is so small, you might as well spend the time memorizing riddles in case you’re ever kidnapped by a guy imitating the joker.

really? Stuff like hard hats or steel toes or hi-viz clothing isn't likely to pay off? What makes you say that?

Certainly true, but the amortized cost of carrying an SSD in my pocket is essentially zero and it buys me some peace of mind, irrational though that may be.

Considering how frequently laptops are stolen during travel I think that is a great safety measure for a much more likely scenario that also ends up with you losing your data.

I fail to see how this is better than syncing to a hard drive that you leave at home?

Two reasons: first, it lets me back up the work I do on the plane and second, it lets me buy a new laptop wherever I am and carry on. (I actually lost a laptop to water once on a trip, not through a plane crash, but by a freak storm that soaked our tent while on a safari in Africa. The backup I had with me let me recover as soon as we got back to civilization and made the 24 hour flight back home much more productive than it would have been otherwise.)

We plan for car crashes by wearing seatbelts, buying insurance and some even buy cars based on safety features. Carrying an SSD seems a little over the top to me when there’s cloud backups, but perhaps there are reasons the poster doesn’t trust cloud services.

And FWIW when I fly I keep my passport, phone and medicine on my body at all times. While the odds of a crash are low it’s better to spend 15 seconds preparing (especially since there’s barely anything else useful to be doing while in the terminal or airplane).

Carrying your passport on your person has nothing to do with planning for a plane crash. You probably carry your phone in your pocket walking down the street just in case of... meteor strike? Godzilla attack?

Correct but missing the point. Passport on your person is a small and easy precaution for tons of unknown unknowns while travelling. A plane crash being one of them.

Car crashes are much, much more frequent though. I think the point the parent is trying to make is plane crashes are infrequent, and the worry isn't worth it - especially compared to what you can actually do.

It resonates with me quite a bit since my parents worry about everything, even trivial things, or would spend a silly amount of time trying to save pennies - not worth it. Given that humans are bad at probabilities/risk assessment, and that people survive way worse disasters, and that SSD probably isn't so important once you gain a different perspective, maybe it is worth worrying less in the long run.

At least in the us seats belts are mandated by law, as is insurance. It is about Risk analysis. The odds your plane crashes is close to zero. The odds you are in a car wreck is greater than zero. A lot of people get the analysis wrong, and out too much effort into something that probably won't happen. That being said, carrying an SSD drive while traveling isn't a bad idea. But not because the plane might crash

Actually, I'm partially this type of person (although it's difficult to admit). But, definitely not as paranoid as the manager, but I did a bit of research before investing in my car and got a manual instead. There was an attempted theft once, but the thief gave up trying to figure out how to drive my car. I'd say my borderline paranoia worked.

Being prepared and worried are two very different things.

If you can't separate those two, that's the problem to address - not simply dispensing with all preparation for the worst outcomes because YOLO.

yes, people often have a hard time tempering their irrational instincts with a rational understanding of risks and probabilities. life is all risk (along with lots of reward). most risks are tiny, part of a very long tail in the risk distribution, and it's literally impossible to plan for all of them.

since many mitigations also have tiny costs (like wearing seatbelts), it's reasonable to do them. planning for a car crash is reasonable (30-40K deaths/year in the US, over a million worldwide). planning for a plane crash is not (less than 1000 deaths/year worldwide, usually much less). i share an irrational fear of flying, but i keep my irrational fear in check with this kind of information.

we should individually spend very little time worrying about and planning for plane crashes, terrorism (in the US particularly), child abductions, school shootings, and the like. the calculus can be different on a population level, so that doesn't absolve governments from worry about some of these things.

we should spend way more time worrying about heart disease (exercise & diet), cancer (food & chemicals, sunscreen), respiratory disease (smoking, air pollution/filtration), and accidental deaths (distracted driving, drug abuse) [0]. with guns, worry about suicides and accidental shootings (safe storage/access) more than self-defense.

[0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php

I fly. During critical phases you should be assuming something bad will happen and prepare for it. At least on the pilot end of things, we don’t like surprises so we put our ducks in a row for when shit goes sideways. The reason planes don’t fall out of the sky all the time is assumption of and preparation for failure. It’s why planes have redundant systems and it’s why our emergency checklists are memorized.

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