Ditching the hard drive

This blog is about ditching the hard drive in my laptop.

I am leaving tomorrow on a business trip to Europe
and I wanted to take my laptop for email and web
access, mostly...but being a security geek, the
constant worry is, "what if it gets stolen".
OK. So what if it does. You loose the hardware.
The real concern, from an IT security perspective
is the data. So, what data do I need ? Well, none.
Where does the data live ? On the hard drive.
So why take it ? To boot the OS and run the
apps. But the only apps I need are network,
web browser, and maybe SSH. So.....ditch the
hard drive, bring a Linux live boot CD or two
(I'm bringing Kubuntu and Backtrack), and a
USB token (freshly rewritten with alternating
patterns of 1's and 0's to erase any pre-existing
data) for saving any docs/config info I want to
retain across boots, and off I go.