Shortly after the Katrina hurricane in 2005, a number of people discovered that the time-honored strategy of putting their “important papers” — wills, birth certificates, marriage licenses, insurance policies — into a bank’s safe deposit box had one fatal flaw: it assumed that the bank would continue functioning even if their own home was flooded, washed away, or burned to the ground. But Katrina flooded a number of banks, too, and with the banks closed for an indefinite period, these people found that they couldn’t access their papers. Without a copy of their policy, some of the more hard-nosed insurance companies wouldn’t provide any help to the desperate people who had lost everything.

The following spring, I noticed an article in the May 14, 2006 issue of the New York Times, entitled “In Case of Disaster, Have a Backup Plan for Your PC.” It made the simple but compelling suggestion that one could make a secure, encrypted backup of important personal files on a flash disk (aka “thumb drive,” “jump drive,” “USB drive” and various other buzzwords). It made sense at the time, because the devices were already inexpensive; and to nobody’s surprise, they’ve become even cheaper in the ensuing year — with tons more storage. A 512-megabyte flash disk typically costs less than $40, and I saw a used one on sale at Amazon for $15.22. The online Apple store offers an 8-gigabyte jump drive for the modest price of $109.95; and of course, there are dozens of other variations, ranging from an almost-free 64 megabytes, up through the 1-, 2-, and 4-gigabyte models.

I’ve currently got a Lexar 4GB drive, which also comes with convenient software for creating multiple encrypted “vaults” (otherwise known as folders or directories), into which you can stuff whatever information you want. It required a modest effort to scan some of my old paper documents, including birth certificates for every member of the family, insurance policies, deeds and mortgage documents for our apartment, etc. But in more and more cases, you can ask for a PDF version of these documents from the official organization that creates them; it may cost another couple dollars, but it’s well worth the effort. For example, I’ve got PDF versions of the last 5 years of federal and state tax returns — which I seem to need about once a year, usually as part of some financial transaction that I never expected to involve tax returns, but which always has to be provided muy pronto.

Of course, the main purpose of this exercise is not just to expedite and simplify the process of providing copies of the documents when filling out a new loan application — but to have them available in case of an emergency. In my case, the electronic versions of all these important documents are placed in a folder called “Bugout Files,” and there’s not only an encrypted copy on my desktop PC, but also on the 4GB flash drive whose stainless steel casing has a small hole at one end, so that it can be put on a keyring. Everything on the flash drive is encrypted, too; so if my keyring is lost or stolen, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will be able to decipher its contents. The great thing about this, of course, is that the one thing I can always be sure to take with me when I leave my apartment is my keyring (next comes my wallet, and then comes the cell phone, and then — maybe — an iPod and other gadgets). So, no matter where I am, I can be reasonably confident that I’ve got all of my important papers with me.

As it turns out, all of my important papers consume a total of 80 megabytes of storage — so why bother getting a 4-gigabyte drive? The answer is simple: I don’t just have my “important papers” on the drive, I’ve got all of my work files. My contact list, my calendar file, my to-do list, and all of the files associated with the client projects I’m working on. Plus all of the articles I’ve ever written, and the manuscripts of every book I’ve ever written. I’ve got thousands and thousands of files, folders, and documents — which, of course, I back up every night, and store offsite in various places. But for all practical purposes, there is also a copy of everything associated with my professional life attached to my keyring.

Well … not quite everything. I’ve got roughly 125,000 email messages from the past 7 years, many of which have attachments; and all of that takes up about 8-10 gigabytes. And then there are my photos: an archive of some 13,500 photos dating back to 1910, many of which also have backups (courtesy of Apple’s iPhoto) of previous versions while I’ve been cropping and editing them. That takes up another 35-40 gigabytes; obviously, there’s no way I’m going to get that onto a flash disk with today’s technology … oh, yeah, and then there are my iTunes music files; that’s about 4 gigabytes of MP3 music, which would be a nuisance to recreate if it all disappeared — but not not enough to justify upgrading to an 8GB flash disk.

So I still rely on the old-fashioned mechanism of a bank safe-deposit box, which I visit once a month with an external 80-gigabyte hard drive (about the size of a pack of cards) containing the latest version of all of my email archives, all of my photographs, all of my application programs … plus all of the stuff that I put on the keyring flash disk.

I realize that not everyone has as much computer-related files and documents as I do; but everyone does have “important papers,” regardless of whether they were created on a computer in the first place. But way back in 1966, I remember reading Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, in which the main character, a one-armed “Loonie” (native-born inhabitant of Luna — the moon) named Manuel Garcia O’Kelly “Mannie” Davis has a lifelike forearm for social occasions, which he has hollowed out in order to keep computer files of every document he has ever created. It seemed pretty far-fetched at the time, especially when I was programming a DEC computer in which 4KB of memory occupied a unit the size of a household refrigerator; but today, you don’t even have to give up your right arm (or your left arm either, for that matter) in order to have this kind of backup mechanism.