This is my approach using a CentOS install with whole hard drive encryption on a Thinkpad X200s. My reasoning is that the recycled laptop (£150 off ebay) is bas

This is my approach using a CentOS install with whole hard drive encryption on a Thinkpad X200s. My reasoning is that the recycled laptop (£150 off ebay) is basically disposable. I keep a backup and a sync (--delete flag in rsync) on two separate external hard drives with physical security. If I leave the laptop on a bus or if it gets stolen, I just restore the tar.gz file onto another laptop, change the UUIDs in fstab and restore the home drives from backup. PS: my paranoia level is quite low, I just don't want information about students available if I lose control of the device.