Soon back up to speed
Hard drives may fill up but extra space has never been more affordable, writes David Behrens.
It’s an intractable rule of computing that no matter how big your hard drive, sooner or later it’s going to fill up. The move towards keeping files on Google Drive or Apple’s iCloud alleviated the situation slightly – but the advent of high definition video, and the storage issues it entails, has compounded it once more.
However, there are now more ways than ever around the problem, and gigabyte for gigabyte, extra space has never been more affordable.
So the next time you notice your desktop or laptop PC groaning at the seams, take a moment to consider whether your files are better suited to local storage or uploaded to a cloud. Obviously, cloud files are accessible to any device at any time and are almost impossible to lose – but there are only so many you can store free of charge. When you exceed your quota, the monthly fees are poor value compared with buying a new disk of your own. Some services charge as much as £8 a month for 100GB of storage, whereas a hard disc 10 times that size can be had for a little over £30.
And a local drive doesn’t have to be tied to a single PC. Portable hard discs can be plugged in and out of different computers at will, and any disc can be “networked” around your home, adding space to all your devices – including phones – at a stroke.
There are various ways of doing this, but the simplest and cheapest is to check the back of your router for a USB socket. Even cheap models supplied free by broadband companies often have these, and their express purpose is to host a portable hard drive. You simply plug one in and the router will share it with every internetenabled device in your house. Typically it will show up as a network drive, but you use it in exactly the same way as a hardwired one.
There are many advantages to doing this: you can store all your video files on a network drive and stream them to any smart TV or set-top box; or maintain a library of family documents which anyone can access without the need to go through a tedious log-in process.
The best approach is to use both local and cloud drives for different purposes. A cloud service like Google Photos is perfect for keeping your family albums and sharing them with anyone you like, and you can store many thousands of snaps before using up your free quota. Third-party services like Dropbox and Amazon Drive are also useful, and you can have several on the go to avoid the need for payment.
Yet there are times when only an upgrade to the physical hard drive inside a PC will do. This is especially true of home office machines which you want to keep separate from your family life, for which your options are to replace the disc you’re using or add an extra one. The latter option is nearly always the easiest.
Almost every desktop PC has the capacity to house two, three or more discs of various shapes and sizes, but few are supplied with more than one. Adding another is simply a matter of opening the case, pushing your new disc into the appropriate slot and connecting it to two spare cables. You can do this yourself in 10 minutes, or ask a local computer shop to do it for you.
The type of disc you buy will depend on the age and size of your PC, but if it’s a recent model there’s a good chance that it will accept one of the new breed of M2 discs, which are not really discs at all but sticks of silicone chips that screw to the main circuit board of your machine – no cables involved. And like other solid state drives, they’re much faster than the old mechanical type – a bonus that’s almost as good as two upgrades for the price of one.
The best approach is to use both local and cloud drives for different purposes.