Backing Up Files and Pics to a Flash or External HD Is Getting Cheaper
Doing backups and file transfers is getting easier and cheaper every year, and this season is no exception.
This is great news for anybody with creative files, photos, important documents or other valuable content on their computers.
Among home computer users , Flash drives have gotten to be the most commonly used storage device for many on-the-fly back-up and file transfer tasks. This season, you'll notice two big trends in flash drive availability.
First, storage capacity has increased. Up until early this year, most flash drives on the retail shelves had 16 to 32 Gb (gigabyte) capacity. Now you'll find 64 and 128 Gb capacity flash drives carried by most retail outlets and online stores.
Second, prices are tumbling. Early this year, a 32 Gb flash drive might range $15-20. You'll now find 64 Gb drives going for $15 and less. Plus, even greater reductions are rolling out at the moment. Walmart is even offering a mark down price of $12 for SanDisk USB 3.0 flash drives at the moment.
External hard drives similarly have increased in capacity and dropped in price. 4 Tb drives are now priced at about $100, and lower capacity drives that serve most home needs adequately are selling at a fraction of last year's prices.
Worth noting also - computer backup utilities have gotten better and more simple to set up. If you're running a business of course it's worth keeping a backup service, and if you're doing lots of phone camera shooting it pays to use the cloud. Many home computer users though will find a flash drive and/or an external drive to be a smart purchase.
Learning to copy-paste or move files from one device to another is not hard to master if you open up File Explorer (a.k.a. Windows Explorer on earlier machines).
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