The good old mechanical portable hard drive lives on, but for how long?

Editors' note: This post was originally published on May 10, 2016 and is periodically updated. The cloud is great. But if you need a serious amount of storage, online backup is never quite enough.

Remember when floppy disks were cutting edge? These days, 1.44 megabytes of memory might not even be enough to store one high-resolution compressed image, much less an entire album of digital photos.

Why your 'backup' drive is corrupting files: The danger of USB hubs and micro-disconnects ...

Fact: the current capacity of hard drives is constantly growing. Fact: data volumes are rising accordingly. Fact: the time it takes to analyse these data volumes, as well as to backup and evaluate ...

(2) A magnetic disk drive that plugs into a USB port on a computer. Used for transport as well as backup and additional storage, portable hard drives rival the capacity of many internal hard drives.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. It’s easy to skimp on storage when you’re buying a computer ...

The modern laptop has its origins in the mid to late 1980s, when shrinking computer hardware and improvements to battery technology finally made mobile computing practical. But before the now iconic ...