{"id":11199,"date":"2022-02-14T18:18:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T17:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1584089"},"modified":"2022-02-14T18:18:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T17:18:00","slug":"best-external-hard-drives-2022-top-models-to-expand-your-storage","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/best-external-hard-drives-2022-top-models-to-expand-your-storage\/","title":{"rendered":"Best external hard drives 2022: top models to expand your storage"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Jason Murdock\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 14 February 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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If your computer or laptop is constantly giving you warnings that it\u2019s running out of storage space, it\u2019s time to invest in an external hard drive.<\/p>\n

Even though a lot of our movie and music collections are now mostly accessed via streaming services like Netflix or Spotify, it\u2019s still pretty easy to fill up most standard machines with programs, files and personal images alone.<\/p>\n

A lot of computers \u2013 especially the most affordable models \u2013 won\u2019t come with a lot of storage. Some budget devices only offer 32 gigabytes (GB) or 64GB. To put that into perspective, Adobe recommends that you should have 16 GB or more storage space available if you want to install Photoshop. And that\u2019s just one program.<\/p>\n

But an external hard drive is not just a place to toss some old photos \u2013 it can be hugely helpful for larger backups \u2013 giving you peace of mind that content is safe and won\u2019t be deleted or corrupted should your computer or laptop break.<\/p>\n

But hold on a second before simply buying the external hard drive with the most capacity \u2013 there\u2019s a little more to it than that. You will need to think about what ports are on your computer, how much space you actually need, how portable you require the external drive to be and whether it should be HDD or SSD.<\/p>\n

We will explain everything in this guide, and recommend some top external hard drives that will offer you a range of storage capacities and speeds. Also in the market for a new computer? Be sure to read our guide to the best budget laptops<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All pricing in this article was correct at the time of publication.<\/p>\n

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