MAKE YOUR HARDWARE FUTURE-PROOF OF
Storage
What might have seemed like a gigantic 320GB hard drive five years ago is probably beginning to feel a little bit titchy in 2017. And, yes, it’s possible to claw back space by uninstalling programs, clearing out junk and compressing files you rarely use. But if you want to keep adding new files and tools for another five years, you’ll probably need to upgrade your storage capacity in one way or another.
We’ve already mentioned SSDS (see page 52) but, while these are great for giving your PC a speed boost, they’re not such a clever option if you’re looking to expand your PC’S storage space because larger-capacity SSDS tend to be expensive.
One solution might be to upgrade your system drive (the one with Windows on it) to an SSD (as we suggested), but keep your old hard drive to use as extra storage. Desktop PCS tend to have multiple drive bays inside,de, so once you’ve swapped your old hard drive for your new SSD, you could put the oldld one into one of the spare bays. If your PC doesn’t have any spare SATA or power cables inside you can buy these online cheaply – Amazon sells SATA cables for less than £2 ( www.snipca.com/ 25155) and SATA power Y-splitter cables for less than £3 ( www. snipca.com/25194).
Laptops don’t usually have space for more than one drive inside, so if you’re going down the SSD route, you could consider buying a cheap enclosure for your old drive once you’ve taken it out, thereby recycling your old internal drive as external USB storage. Inateck’s USB 3.0 HDD SATA enclosure is cheap (about £9 from www.snipca.com/25154) and doesn’t even require a screwdriver.
To keep you going for another five years, you really need a minimum of 1TB storage – possibly even more if you work with large files like home-video clips. So, if your SSD + hard drive = less than 1TB, you could consider buying another large-capacity hard drive for storage – either an internal one (if you’ve the space) or an external USB drive. Either way, you’re looking at about £40 for a 1T 1TB drive ( www.snipca. cocom/25157).
Alternatively, if you’d ra rather combine the sp speed of an SSD with th the space of a hard drive in a single, reasonably pr priced upgrade, you co could consider moving Wi Windows to a solid-state hy hybrid drive (SSHD). Th These are traditional hard dr drives that have a small am amount of onboard solidst state storage for frequently us used files. They aren’t as fast as true SSDS, but they’ll still provide a noticeable boost. Prices start at around £60 for a 1TB Toshiba H200 drive ( www. snipca.com/25158 – pictured below left).
Networking
Wireless-networking technology is constantly evolving. Newer Wi-fi standards can increase range, speed or both. By 2022, standards such as 802.11ad (also known as Wigig), 802.11af, 802.11ah and 802.11ax could be commonplace. But, while some devices already support these newer standards, we wouldn’t suggest buying them right now because it’s not clear which will be widely adopted.
Networking products tend to be backwards-compatible, meaning a router from five years in the future should still connect to your current PC. That said, your current networking hardware could be holding you back in terms of speed and range, and an upgrade could provide faster, more reliable