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Showing posts with the label external SSD

Best UPS Battery Backup and Surge Protector for a Home PC in 2026

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Last updated: October 22, 2026. Specs and advice come from Newegg Insider (published September 15, updated October 7, 2026), Techlicious (updated February 4, 2026) and Gadget Wisdom (August 16, 2026), with a CNET surge protector roundup, all read October 22, 2026. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer A surge protector guards against voltage spikes, while a UPS adds a battery so you can save work and shut down during an outage. Size a UPS by its watt rating, not just VA, and choose pure sine wave output for a desktop PC. For surge protectors, Techlicious suggests UL or ETL certification, 400V or lower let-through voltage and at least 1,000 joules. A power flicker can end an unsaved document, and a voltage spike can quietly damage a computer, router or monitor. A surge protector and a UPS both help, but they do different jobs. T...
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Best Portable SSDs in 2026 for iPhone, Mac and PC: How to Choose

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Last updated: October 22, 2026. Specs and picks come from Newegg Insider (published October 6, updated October 7, 2026), WIRED's external drive guide (updated September 2026) and Apple Support's iPhone guide, all read October 22, 2026. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer Match the drive to your port first: USB 3.2 Gen 2 drives run near 1,050 MB/s, and Gen 2x2 drives near 2,000 MB/s only on devices that support it. For iPhone, Apple says the drive needs a single data partition in a supported format such as APFS, exFAT or FAT32. Treat a portable SSD as one copy, not your only copy, and check current retailer prices because WIRED reports big price jumps. A portable SSD is one of the easiest ways to free up space on a phone or laptop, move large photo and video files, or keep a quick extra copy of your work. The catch is ...
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How to Format an External SSD: exFAT vs NTFS vs APFS and the Right Allocation Unit Size (2026)

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Last updated: October 22, 2026. Defaults follow Microsoft’s cluster size table as summarized by How-To Geek, and Apple’s Disk Utility guidance. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links below are affiliate links, which means this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Quick answer Use the default allocation unit size. How-To Geek notes you probably will not notice a difference in speed with a modern drive, and the default is tuned to the drive size. Pick the file system by where you use the drive: exFAT for Windows and Mac, NTFS for Windows only, APFS for Mac only. Formatting erases everything on the drive. Back up first. You may have seen advice to set an exact allocation unit size, such as 4KB for small files or 32KB for media, to speed up an external SSD. In practice, the file system you choose matters much more than the cluster size, and for most people the default is right. This guide explains what allocation unit size i...
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