A quick checklist before blowing away a hardrive when eager to install a new OS so that nothing gets missed:

  • Usually I have a ~/backups directory
  • SSH keys in ~/.ssh
    • id_rsa and id_rsa.pub
    • either backup, or (better) find where they are to be used and make sure you have another way to access all servers
  • GPG keys in ~/.gnupg
    • keybase ~/.config/keybase/ or $ keybase pgp export -s
  • Tor hidden service keys /var/lib/tor
    • Ricochet id keys ${RICOCHET_CONFIG_DIR}/config/ricochet.json and possibly data-0 directory

All documents should already be in Dropbox/Documents or SpiderOak or whatever cloud storage you use and all code should be in git somewhere.