View from the Labs
Is your PC or laptop bursting at the seams? Don’t beat yourself up – it’s never been easier to upgrade, whether that’s via a class-leading NVMe drive or an external USB option
Buying extra storage can feel like an admission of failure.
You have let your files grow out of control until your hard disk can’t take any more, and now, rather than pruning them back, you’re simply buying your way out of the problem.
Or, perhaps the issue isn’t your file management. Perhaps the real culprit is your past self, who bought a computer that genuinely didn’t have enough storage for your needs. They cheaped out and now you’re having to pick up their slack. Either way, it’s not a great feeling.
Don’t blame yourself. If hard disks had kept pace with other PC components then by now a new laptop ought to come with about 4TB of storage. Instead, many of us are still bumbling along with 256GB, and having to deal with the housekeeping and guilt that entails. It’s not fair, especially when every other part of the PC seems to breezily exceed our requirements. Why, in 2021, don’t we have enough storage?
The reason is hardly a mystery. Mechanical hard disk technology was right on track to bring us the huge capacities we feel entitled to – but in about 2009 the industry took a sharp left turn and we all started switching to faster, smoother SSDs.
I can’t say that was the wrong move. On the rare occasions in recent years that I’ve come across a computer still running off an old spinning hard disk, I’ve been left incredulous. How did we ever persuade ourselves that this sort of stuttering, grinding, achingly slow performance was acceptable? It’s mad to me that when I first joined the PC Pro team, this was the state of the art. I’m amazed I didn’t chuck my work computer in the bin and write out my reviews longhand.
But SSD technology brings its own problems. Comparatively high prices mean there’s every incentive to try to make do with the smallest drive you can, and laptop builders in particular play along by offering base-level builds with a functional minimum of storage. We can’t be blamed too much if, one way or another, we end up undershooting our requirements.
Happily, expanding your storage isn’t the compromise it used to be – especially not outboard storage.
Back in the pre-SSD days, external drives were an option of last resort, combining the tortuous seek times of a mechanical disk with a top speed of around 40MB/sec, courtesy of the USB 2 interface. If you had to rely on one of those for your day-to-day storage needs, you might be understandably frustrated.
This month, though, we’ve seen external SSDs blasting out data at 20 times that speed over the latest USB 3 connections. The drives are much smaller and lighter too, and while they might not be as fast as a high-end NVMe drive, they’re pricecompetitive – and significantly cheaper than the chips soldered into your laptop.
For all of these reasons, it can actually be the smart move to start off with a modest amount of storage, and then upgrade as and when you need to. Running out of storage space is annoying, but it doesn’t have to be a big deal – and rest assured, it’s not your fault.
“How did we ever persuade ourselves that this sort of stuttering, grinding, achingly slow performance was acceptable?”