External Drives

When it comes to archiving and storing art projects or games, external drives are a cheap option to local storage vs online cloud storage.

Cloud Storage tends to cost and comes on a subscription type service. The better alternative is to get an external drive.

Pros and Cons:

speed of the drives – SSD are fast but are expensive when adding more than 1TB. SATA drives small factory(powered by system or phone) can store more data, but low cost deals tend to be older technology.

• USB 3.2 Gen 1: originally known as USB 3.0, and previously renamed to USB 3.1 Gen 1. It’s the original USB 3.0 specification, and it can transfer data at up to 5Gbps.
• USB 3.2 Gen 2: Previously known as USB 3.1, and then later as USB 3.1 Gen 2. It offers speeds at up to 10Gbps.
• USB 3.2 Gen 2×2: formally known as USB 3.2, it’s the newest and fastest spec, promising speeds at up to 20Gbps (by using two lanes of 10Gbps at once).

Drives are encrypted, such that if you have an issue with the enclosure, and you want to remove the drive to access data, most likely the data will not be available w/o the original controller board from the device. (such as WD My Books and My Cloud).