I’ve just stuffed all my external drives into one trouser pocket. That’s four USB sticks, two hard-disk drives (HDD) and one SSD.
I did this not in a pathetic attempt to impress Mae West, but to prove to myself how small and portable they’ve become.
It’s one of two chief reasons I was so keen on this issue’s Cover Feature. The other is how tantalisingly cheap they’ve become. Twenty years ago you’d pay roughly £50 per 10GB. But if you take the Seagate One Touch Hub as an example (see page 53), which costs £104 for 4TB, that price has plunged to 25p per 10GB. Robert Irvine recommends the One Touch Hub as the best external hard drive available. He also suggests which SSDs and USB sticks you should buy, including one eye-catching device that’s both.
But he starts with nine reasons why external drives are an essential part of modern computing – and it’s not just all about adding extra storage.