I think the point here is that it took you time to set up that dev environment. It shouldn't matter where your environment is (a VM, a laptop, etc), you should

I think the point here is that it took you time to set up that dev environment. It shouldn't matter where your environment is (a VM, a laptop, etc), you should be able to recreate it easily and reliably. This is what the automation tools are for. I prefer salt stack and have a salt config for my work laptop. If something happens to the laptop or I get a new one I just need to run salt, wonder off for an hour and when I get back my entire environment is set up. I also use it with vagrant so that when a new dev joins the team they can run one command and have a copy of the project setup in a vagrant box, databases and all, ready to go. You could set up a similar thing so that if you lose that USB key you can have your prefect setup reinstalled with minimal fuss.