Hi
I’ve been reviewing all the options for buying a Librem 14, and noticed there are 2 storage options:
“Storage” and “Storage 2”. Apart from the RAM (has its own menu option), the laptop appears to have one main storage. Why 2 storage menus ?
There is also the Librem Key, and the Librem Vault. Are there any options for selecting the technology for these 2 USB drives ? If not, what is the brand/capacity of these devices.
Thanks,
Uzma
My understanding is that there are only two storage options if you select the 3-cell battery and right now the 3-cell battery is not available and hence, no, there aren’t actually two storage options at the moment. So the next paragraph is theoretical.
There are two storage menus because the laptop allows you to install two disks internally. Therefore you need to configure what you want for the first disk, and you need to configure what you want, if anything, for the second disk.
The Librem Key is not a USB drive. It is not for storage. It’s a security token. It has limited storage for encryption keys and other secrets. Some explanation here: https://puri.sm/products/librem-key/
You use it, among other things, in conjunction with the tamper-detecting firmware for the Librem 14 (and other Purism devices that support the Librem Key for that purpose).
It is however a USB device.
There are no options. The brand is Purism (it’s a custom product). It is not a general purpose storage mechanism, so capacity is not really relevant.
I don’t know much about it but the Purism web site says:
It is a plain USB flash drive, gold coloured, with Librem Vault label on it, that is used to store your Librem Key’s public GPG key (textual file with .asc extension). Librem Vault drive is required for certain operations with PureBoot, like OEM factory reset of the PureBoot.
I don’t know what the capacity is but it is probably not intended for general storage (and you can surely get cheaper and/or bigger USB flash drives from anywhere). I don’t know what the underlying brand is. I don’t think there are any options.
I think that the advantage of the Librem Vault is that you won’t use it for general storage - so it will be safe for when you need it, and stands out from the crowd of other random flash drives. (If you are like me, there are dozens of flash drives lying around.)