External drive

How it works

Encrypt it if it leaves the building. The copy onto the drive is a transfer. The drive is not a backup until it lives somewhere else. Losing an unencrypted drive is a disclosure.

A 2 TB shuttle drive carries a project between two suites. FileVault-style encryption is on. The hash of the project folder matches at the far end. A previous unencrypted drive left in a rideshare was a reportable event. This one is a normal handoff.

How it differs

An external drive is not object storage. There is no presign and no lifecycle.

USB disconnects corrupt the last file written.

Eject, then hash.

On the ticket

• The practical close is a log line: time, actor, byte count, result.
• Without that line the transfer is a story.
• With it, the next person can see whether this door did what the ticket claimed.
• If the path is shared, say so in the partner profile so a later change does not silently pick a different limit, key, or region.
• On a real ticket, write down the door, the byte count, and the clock.
• For external drive, that means naming the host or bucket, the expected size, and the time the other side must have a complete file.
• A progress bar is not that record.
• A 200 response that arrives before the complete call is not that record.
• If a retry is allowed, say how many and whether it resumes.
• If a person must approve the send, name the person.
• Partners who receive external drive files should match on hash or size before they import.
• A same-length corrupt file passes a size check and fails a hash.
• Keep the published hash off the only channel an attacker can edit, or treat it as a corruption check rather than a substitution check.
• When the path changes, new key, new region, new cap, update the profile the same day so the next run does not use a stale limit.