Physically, external hard
drives have continued to
shrink over the last
decade, and they’ve
almost reached the point where
their size is starting to be limited
by the constraints of having a
mechanical spinning disk. But
just because external hard
drives aren’t signifi cantly
reducing in size doesn’t mean
that the’re not developing in
other ways.
USB 3.0 is now basically
commonplace and the additional
power it can deliver (along with
faster transfer rates) means that
larger, more power-hungry drives
can run without needing a
dedicated power cord. Testament
to this is the new 3TB My Passport
Ultra from Western Digital – a
pocket-sized portable which offers
as much space as entry-level
desktop drives. This newfound
capacity for portable drives has
been eating into the external
desktop drive market, making
dedicated ‘wall powered’ drives
harder to come by – despite
putting an open call out to all
the major drive vendors, we
only received one of the latter
for this feature.
Another complicating factor in
the external-storage equation is
the emerging wireless hard drive
category. These are targeting
smartphone and tablet use as much
as PCs and laptops. As our mobiles
become more important to us and
streaming home media technology
becomes more attainable, hard
drives that can back up data from a
range of devices are taking more of
the spotlight from plug-bound
options.
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