Vault is visible and therefore obvious. If you need to be discreet, this sounds useful.

veracrypt.io/en/Hidden Volume.html

Ah yes, certainly easier and more convenient to boot into a live OS or hidden OS every time you need to mount a hidden volume (per VeraCrypt’s recommended guideline), instead of just using the hardware from OPs post.

Those recommendations are for protecting data you want to stay a secret; it would also apply to unlocking this fancy USB drive, as a best practice.

The USB still has advantage in that no one will compel you to unencrypt a drive that they don’t realize is encrypted, which can be a pretty significant advantage depending on who you’re hiding the information from, or why.

you don’t have to boot into some special live OS to mount the hidden volume. It can be mounted just like a normal encrypted volume.

That hides another volume inside another VeraCrypt volume, so it’s obvious it’s not a normal drive

That’s what I would go with if I was inclined. Create a volume the size of the drive and add a hidden volume with a different password within like we’ve been doing for years (decades at this point maybe almost).

I would upload encrypt file somewhere and download it when needed. If you’re worried someone will actually access your USB stick looking for encrypted data, why carry it at all? It’s cool if you want to pretend you’re a spy or something but it’s not very practical.

That’s assuming that wherever you are going to or coming from has an internet connection. It’s likely that there will be a connection, but it’s still not a guarantee. And if there is a connection, the size of the files you’re carrying may make using that connection impractical.

Yes, but you can just carry encrypted hard drive with you. Hiding encrypted data is useful pretty much only for legal reasons. You want to take it across border and are worried TSA agent will force you to decrypt it or something. What is safer in that case? Carrying a USB stick with hidden encrypted partition or not carrying anything at all and downloading the data later? I would say the latter. Smuggling encrypted data through custom checks into a war zone with limited internet access is the cool but unlikely spy games scenario I was talking about. Encrypted microSD card would be even more secure in that case.

to a war zone? such inspections are done not only in unlikely scenarious like when going to “a war zone”

The “war zone” was referring to difficult internet access. Iran recently cut off entire country from internet. If you’re going to USA you may be inspected but you will most likely get internet access once you crossed the border.

I guess you might just want to carry all your passwords in there, but then generally the password file itself is encrypted so I don’t see the point.

that’s like saying “password managers require a password so I don’t see the point”

That is pretty much what I said yeah

I mainly carry thumbdrives for larger files or things I don’t want hosted online.