Cold Storage: Partition Hard Drive vs Separate Laptop

[r-bitcoin]

Instead of having a separate laptop for cold storage, could I just set up a partition on my macbook? (Of course I would never connect to the internet when I boot up from that partition)
Thanks

[goatpig]

No, this is a terrible idea.

[r-bitcoin]

Thanks for the reply. What about using a bootable USB flash drive instead of a separate offline laptop? Would that be safe?

[goatpig]

When you say cold storage, you should think air gapped. You do not want to expose your private keys, encrypted or not, to a machine that has access to the internet. Otherwise you are exposing yourself to root kits at the very least.

In your particular example, consider how much has been put into designing hardware wallets over the USB interface with hardened private key containment.