I had two 32 GB flash drives lying around. I decided to use them as follows:
- One serves as a portable Ventoy installation with several GNU/Linux ISOs (ArcoLinux, my daily driver; Rescatux for when I break my systems and, mostly for nostalgic reasons, Linux Mint). The rest of the space is used as a portable storage for useful files (thanks to Ventoy flexibility), scripts etc. which I might need, as stated above, on the fly, wherever I am.
- I have just flashed the second flash drive with a fresh Tails installation to have around when anything sensitive needs to be done. I have not used Tails before, but thanks to the spare flash drive, I am eager to try it out.
That would cover the 16 GB and 32 GB flash drives from the question. As for the 1 GB one, I have one empty flash drive for whenever I need to bring a presentation for an event, just a few files to pass to someone in person etc.
Furthermore, I am constantly carrying around another empty 32 GB flash drive for any occasion, just in case. Used a few times here and there. It might be a bit excessive, but I am not going anywhere without my backpack and the flash drive weights nothing, so I can have one there all the time. The others are stored in my notebook bag, so this way I always have at least the empty one in my backpack and when needed, the others whenever I go somewhere prepared to do some work.
I have been thinking about having one flash drive with a full Arch system (ArcoLinux probably in my case, even though any stable distro might be a better idea) just in case everything goes wrong with all my devices. This way I could continue working on anything I have been previously working on. Addressing the issues only when I have free time to spare and not having to worry about fixing the issues immediately to have any working system at hand.
I am now thinking that the USB drives would probably be better off encrypted. There are no sensitive data, but it might be worth nonetheless, I believe. Well, when I have some time…