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À partir d’avant-hierLifehacker

These External Hard Drives, Memory Cards, and Flash Drives Are up to 75% Off

When I'm looking to buy a computer, I don't consider the storage capacity to be as important as I once did. These days, it's pretty easy to find good deals on external storage, especially if you keep an eye out for price cuts. Amazon's current sale on WD and SanDisk storage devices is a prime example.

Western Digital 18 TB External Hard Drive

I don't know if any one person can fill up 18 terabytes of storage, but if you can, more power to you. If you're up for the challenge, Amazon currently has a WD 18 TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive on sale for $299.99 (originally $529.99) after a 43% discount. With USB 3.0, it offers fast data transfer and it is compatible with Windows and Mac—but for the latter, you'll need to follow some on-screen instructions to reformat it. This WD hard drive was launched in 2020, and it's at one of the lowest prices I've seen (but not the lowest) after looking at price tracking tools. If 18 TB seems like overkill, make sure to check out the other lower storage options below.

SanDisk 1.5 TB Ultra microSDXC Memory Card

For devices like Android smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, Windows laptops, DSLR cameras, and even the Nintendo Switch, microSDXC memory cards can extend their memory space to fit more games, images, videos, photos, and files. Right now, you can get a 1.5TB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC Memory Card with an adapter for $109.99 (originally $149.99), which is the lowest price it has been.

SanDisk 256GB Ultra Luxe Flash Drive

For a more discrete and portable storage device than an external hard drive, consider a flash drive. Amazon has a SanDisk 256 GB flash drive for only $12.49 (originally $49.99) after a 75% discount. This flash drive can transfer up to 150 MB per second via USB 3.0.

You Can Get This Mini Ultra Portable SSD on Sale for $44 Right Now

These mini solid-state drives (SSDs) are on sale right now: 256GB for $43.99, 512GB for $60.99, and 1TB for $99.99. They measure 2.8 by 1.4 inches, making them as compact as a pack of gum and excellent for traveling and long-term storage. Each SSD has a USB 3.2 interface with up to 550Mbps read and 500Mbps write speeds and includes a USB-A to USB-C cable for easy connectivity to your laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

You can get these mini SSDs on sale right now, though prices can change at any time:

How to Share a Google One Subscription With Your Family

Google One is a subscription service that includes a few additional benefits beyond a Google Drive subscription—some of the larger Google One plans actually come with access to Gemini Advanced, the most cutting-edge version of Google's AI model. And unlike a regular Google Drive subscription, you can share a Google One subscription with your family members, giving everyone in the household access to a large pool of cloud storage, plus a few other perks.

To do so, the first step is setting up a Google Family.

How to set up a Google Family

The first step to sharing Google One with your family is to actually set up a family group within your Google account. To do that, head to one.google.com and then click Settings (the cog at the top right of the window). Now, select Manage Family settings > Manage > Create a family group and follow the rest of the prompts.

To invite members to your Google Family Group, select Manage family settings > Manage > Send new invitation and enter the email addresses of the users you want to invite.

How to share Google One with your family group

Now that you have a family group set up, it's time to start sharing your benefits with the rest of the family. Once again, at one.google.com, click the settings cog at the top of the screen, and then select Manage Family Settings. You should now see a Share Google One with family option with a toggle next to it. Select the toggle to turn it on (the switch will be to the right when it is turned on). This will share Google One with your family.

Keep in mind that your family will still have their own "individual storage." However, once their individual storage is filled, they'll start taking advantage of the "family storage" that you've unlocked with both the Family Group and your Google One subscription.

Can you share Gemini AI access with your Family Group?

While many of the benefits of Google One are shared with your family, access to Gemini Advanced is not one of those shared benefits. So, if you have one of the AI plans that Google One now offers, you won't be able to share Gemini Advanced access with your family; they'll still need to subscribe themselves to get full access to Google's best AI language model.

So, what exactly is shared with your family when you share Google One? Google says it will share benefits like extra Google Photos editing features, access to Google experts through tech support, storage, and premium video calling features. Depending on your Google One plan, you may also be able to monitor the dark web for your private information.

You Can Get 2TB of PhotoSphere Storage for $280 Right Now

You can get 2TB of storage from PhotoSphere on sale for $279.99 right now (reg. $299). It comes with a lifetime subscription, AI support to help you search for photos by facial recognition and location, and it uses encryption to keep your files safe. You can get lifetime access to PhotoSphere with 2TB on storage on sale for $279.99 right now (reg. $299), though prices can change at any time.

You Can Get 1TB of Koofr Cloud Storage for $130 Right Now

You can get 1TB of Koofr cloud storage on sale for $129.97 right now (reg. $810) with the promo code KOOFR through March 24. Koofr helps keep files, photos, and other data safe and in one place, and since you can access your account across all your devices, you can always find what you need when you need it. You can even connect your other cloud storage accounts with Koofr to create an easy-access data storage hub. Koofr has encrypted files and zero tracking, and its interface makes file management is pretty straightforward, including a duplicate file finder. If you've been looking to buy cloud storage for your files, this sale is a good time—just be aware that your code must be redeemed within 15 days of buying.

You can get a lifetime subscription to Koofr Cloud Storage on sale for $129.97 right now (reg. $810) with the promo code KOOFR through March 24 at 11:59 p.m. PT, though prices can change at any time.

A Reminder That Trusting Everything to Cloud Storage Can Screw You Over

So much of our digital lives now exist solely in the cloud. Companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft make it all too easy to upload our important files to cloud storage from the moment we set up our devices.

On one hand, that's a good thing: If something happens to your phone, tablet, or laptop, that doesn't mean you lose all your messages, photos, and documents—assuming all that info is properly backed up to the cloud. When you get your device fixed or replaced, you can sign back into your account and pull all that data down from the cloud without losing anything in the transition. In fact, I suspect that our collective data has never been more secured than it is today, thanks to the abundance and simplicity of cloud storage.

However, that's not to say that our backup situation is perfect—far from it. Relying solely on the cloud for data storage can have disastrous consequences.

Google recently lost up to six months' worth of data for some Drive users

You can see those consequences in play this week: Unfortunately, some Google Drive users are reporting missing files dating back to May 2023. Google has publicly acknowledged the issue and is investigating, but that investigation won't necessarily bring back any of the files that have vanished from these users' Google Drive accounts. (I guess they'd just have to take comfort in knowing that Google figured out why it happened?)

For your protection, one Google Drive team member did warn users not to click disconnect account on Google Drive for desktop, and to avoid deleting or moving data in the following folders:

  • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\DriveFS

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS 

...but that's not exactly a big comfort.

To be clear, this event is not common. Companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft host a lot of data from millions, if not billions, of users, without regularly losing any of it. Still, if it can happen once, it can happen again. Perhaps Apple announces next year that iCloud had an issue, and three months worth of photo uploads are now gone. Maybe Microsoft loses OneDrive user's data next October. You can't assume these services will be infallible forever.

That isn't to say don't use them. I use iCloud for just about everything I do in the Apple ecosystem. However, for anything important, you need to make sure you have a secondary backup in case something goes wrong.

That's what's likely playing out with these affected Google Drive users right now: Some of them will have used their Google Drive accounts as a secondary backup for their files, keeping another backup of them stored on a hard drive or another cloud service. They'll be frustrated, but not panicked, as the lost files will still be in this alternate location. Unfortunately, any users that added these files to Google Drive and deleted them from their computer (or created them in Drive and never made a backup) are likely very unhappy this week.

How to securely back up your files

So let's talk about a secure backup situation looks like. Say you have an archive of important documents stored on your computer. They only exist on your computer, so if your SSD goes belly-up, those files are toast. So, what can you do? One easy solution is to add a copy of these files to a secondary location, whether that's an external hard drive or cloud storage. Now, these files exist in two places separate from each other. If the SSD breaks, they're in the cloud. If the cloud glitches out, they're on your computer. If the files are super important, making additional backups ensures that should an unlikely disaster strike, you'll still have access. Having files stored in at least two separate locations is usually enough protection for most of us.

But let's say your computer is running out of storage, and you don't want to store the files locally anymore. Don't simply dump them on the cloud or on an external SSD, delete them from your PC, and call it a day—one backup is no backup, after all. You'll want to copy them to another cloud storage or external storage solution to ensure there are at least two copies of those files somewhere.

Be careful with automated cloud storage solutions

Where this starts to get a bit tricky is when using automated cloud storage options like iCloud. Apple makes it easy to connect all your data to iCloud so you never really need to think about constantly backing things up. When you take a photo, it stores on your iPhone and iCloud: When you send a message, same thing.

While you technically have two files in two separate locations, a service like iCloud is tied to your iPhone. If you delete a message from your iPhone, it helpfully deletes that text from the cloud too. If you delete a photo from your library, it gets deleted from iCloud (after a 30 day countdown, anyway). That's by design, and it means your files aren't totally secure against data loss.

What I like to do is rely on cloud storage solutions like iCloud for general backing up purposes (if I lose my iPhone, signing into a new one with my Apple ID brings all my data back), while also making a full backup of my devices to an external source. You can make a backup of your iPhone to iTunes or Finder on your computer, for example, while still having all your data stored in iCloud. That way, if you accidentally delete a thread of messages from your iPhone and iCloud at once, you can restore from your backup to get them back. The same goes for missing photos, notes, contacts, or anything else that gets lost.

While you can rely on full cloud backups for a similar approach, they tend to back up automatically and overwrite the previous backup, so your chances of restoring to a backup that also is missing the data you're looking for is high. The tradeoff with external backups, such as to a computer, is they're less frequent, so you may miss new messages and photos that were added since the last backup. It's a balancing act, but the point is to protect your data in as many ways as possible.

Photos are probably the thing I worry about losing most, and would be devastated if something happened to Apple's servers and I lost every photo I've ever taken with mu iPhone. So on my Mac, I choose the "Download Originals to this Mac" option in Photos' settings under iCloud. That way, my Mac always has a backup of the full-res photos and videos in my library, while my other devices can pull from the cloud as needed. Should something happen to the photos on Apple's end, my Mac has all my media saved securely.

This conversation can get a little in the weeds, especially as you start to focus on specific services. (OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, etc.) But the general rule of thumb for all backups is simple: You need to keep all of your important files stored in at least two separate locations. So long as you have another source to pull your files from, you can safely weather any disaster—digital or physical—that befalls your data.

These Portable SSDs Are up to 60% Off

Black Friday deals are here, and you can find great deals on gaming consoles. If you’re a gamer, you understand the struggle of never having enough storage. Unfortunately, storage expansion packs for consoles can get awfully expensive; a 2TB Seagate storage expansion pack for the Xbox Series X, for instance, is currently $279.99. Luckily, there are other options. The Crucial X6 and X8 portable solid state drives (SSDs) are heavily discounted on Amazon for their Black Friday sale, down to the lowest prices they’ve ever been, and they’re compatible with the newest consoles (to an extent).

The Crucial X6 and X8 are at their lowest prices yet

If you’re looking for a trusted brand in SSDs that are compatible with gaming consoles, then I have one for you: Crucial has been making SSDs that are compatible with the latest gaming consoles for some time. Their Crucial X8 and X6 external SSDs are made for students, gamers, and on-the-go creators. Here are your current options:

  • Crucial X6 SSD: The X6 is small, measuring 69 mm x 64 mm, with speeds of up to 800MB/s, and your choice between 500GB to 4TB of storage. Currently, the best deal available is for the 2TB on Amazon with a 60% discount at $79.99 (originally $199.99). This matches the lowest price it has been, according to Camelcamelcamel's price history. You can read PCMag's full review of it here. However, before you pull the trigger on the X6, consider the X8 for the same price.

  • Crucial X8 SSD: You can think of the X8 as the older brother of the X6. Although it's only 20% off, it's the same price as the X6, at $79.99 (originally $99.99). This is the lowest price it’s been, according to Camelcamelcamel's price history. The X8 can reach faster speeds than the X6, of up to 1,050MB/s. It measures 110 mm x 53.1 mm x 11.4 mm, and it has rubberized ends to add shock protection. With much faster speeds than the X6 for the same price, there's no reason not to get the X8.

  • Crucial X10 Pro: If you’re looking for much faster speeds of up to 2100MB/s, the X10 Pro is also available for $129.99, its lowest price ever, according to Camelcamelcamel's price history.

Compatibility with Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5

The Crucial website explains how their SSDs are compatible with the latest consoles. However, something you should be aware of is that they don’t provide full compatibility. This is what you get for the crucial SSDs, according to Crucial:

  • Xbox Series X games can be stored on a third-party drive. Players will need to copy them over to the internal drive or expansion card in order to play them. 

  • Sony PlayStation 5 games can only be played directly from licensed drives. But, like the Series X, you can play PS4 titles from third-party devices.

As you can see in the video above, you'll be able to store games on the SSD, but you'll have to transfer them from the internal storage of the console. Also, the PS5 will only allow you to play PS4 games from the SSD. You can read more about the details on their website here.

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