What is Sneakernet

What is Sneakernet: a reader asks…

I must be missing something. I’ve heard of Internet, Ethernet, and even Intranet, but someone told me a new one yesterday. “Sneakernet”. What does it mean?

Nowadays with cloud-based file storage and sharing services so ubiquitous, it’s pretty trivial to share files between colleagues and friends. It didn’t use to be that way. When someone wanted to send a very large file (that wouldn’t go via email) or a bunch of files, they would copy the file or files onto a thumbdrive or other external & removable file storage device, and then ‘walk’ the thumbdrive over to the colleague or friend. This is sneakernet: The act of physically walking files (using your shoes/feet/sneakers) from one place to another instead of using cyber-space. I last wrote about this in 2017 (read it here), but let me take this opportunity to include some specific directions on how you’d do this.

First step, get yourself a thumbdrive. These used to cost a lot more money, but nowadays they are really cheap. You can pickup a nice 64gb thumbdrive from Microcenter for $18. If you want really gargantuan sized (in capacity, not physical size), you can find them up to 2tb in size, although 512gb is usually the largest anyone will need. Beware of the thumbdrives that are huge capacity and low price. The market has been flooded with these cheap thumbdrives and the risks are high: a) they may be infected with viruses and malware, and b) they may be so shoddily constructed they won’t last more than a few uses. A reasonable price today for a 512gb thumbdrive is $70 (also at Microcenter) although really good ones can still go for $200 or so.

Next, you’ll want to insert that thumbdrive into your computer and open two file explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) window. One window (let’s say on the left side of the screen) should be to the location of the files you want to copy and the other window (let’s say on the right side of the screen) should be to the thumbdrive. You can highlight all the files in the left-side window by pressing Ctrl A (Windows) or Command A (Mac). Then position your cursor over any highlighted file, click and hold and drag the cursor over to the other window.

If you don’t want to copy every file, you can use Shift & Click (Mac or PC) to select multiple, contiguous files. Hold down the Shift key and click the first file, then with the shift key still held down, click the last file and all the ones in-between will also be highlighted. If you want to cherry-pick non-contiguous files, then hold down the Ctrl key (Windows) Command key (Mac) and click on each item you want to highlight. For more info on this click and drag technique, see my article Safely copy or move files.