Hard drive upgrades have always been a techy way to increase storage and data access speed. Early adopters have been using Solid State Hard drives (SSD) to boost speed and durability in laptops for the past few years. If you're more an average consumer, SSDs and their related technologies can be daunting. Below is a friendly explanation about TRIM and why it matters for those who make the jump to SSD drives. More

Despite what one might gander, most of us at Unplggd are just like everyone else in the fact we're always trying to stretch the life of our tech "just one more month/year". Although we receive plenty of tech to test, the majority is returned (or better yet, given away), so we have to budget and plan for upgrades, looking to the horizon when an upgrade may come along (tax return, holla!). Recently my own laptop began to show the clear signs of its age, with performance slowing to the point I was seemingly doing as much waiting than working. I had come to that crossroad where one must decide to update or upgrade… More

As new technologies become more widely adapted, down comes the prices and potential for everyone around you to think you're nerding out. Okay, maybe we're still nerding out. But when we hear solid state drives have already reached 600GB capacities from the short time frame that they've been available, we couldn't help but get a little excited. Here's a quick roundup of the current state of solid state drives, just in case you enjoy nerding out on information hardware as much as we do. More

Computer back up advice is often accompanied by the suggestion to clone your main drive in addition to daily incremental back up. We here at Unplggd have also suggested cloning as a necessary part of any back up program. The common advice to is to use a program like CarbonCopy when the built in Disk Utility will clone a hard drive just fine. More

Verbatim Wallet Drive

• $67.77
• Amazon

Take a close look. What looks like a leather wallet is actually a compact 640 GB USB 2.0 drive. The executive-style stitched leather enclosure looks assuredly Don Draper dapper, but what impresses equally is the 7 year warranty backing up the drive (very nice considering this drive is meant to be used on-the-go). Note, although the drive plays perfectly nice with both Mac and Windows machines, the included Nero BackItUp and Burn Software is Windows-only.

A new breed of hard drives are starting to become more available and affordable than before: The Solid State Drives or SSD. Not only they are more reliable than the regular hard drives; but they also provide a performance boost to any machine equipped with them. See, performance, is the combination of several components working in perfect harmony inside your computer, and the hard drive, (along with the processor speed and RAM) is one of them. More

If you've got some important data - say like, data you've accumulated over 2-3 years that's irreplaceable - we suggest you grab an external or sign up for a cloud backup service today. You don't want to end up like this university researcher who's potentially lost years worth of data that may have led to a possible cure for prostate cancer. So, if you haven't backed up in ages and have some really important stuff on that laptop of yours, we've provided two stupidly easy ways to get your stuff backed up ASAP. More

When you are on the go, you need to be as light as possible and only the most important of the peripherals will make the trip with you. Now, if you have one of these small footprint hardrives, you won't mind them tagging along and with the piece of mind of having up to 1TB of space at your disposal. More

It's become apparent to me that this solid-state drive craze will likely meet cataclysmic levels once they reduce the price by half of what they are right now. In addition to the lower power consumption, cooler temperatures, and no moving parts, it's the performance jumps that showcases their true power. Here's 3 devices could use a turbo-charged SSD upgrade. More

Hard drives are a great thing to have around. Even if you're not a successful photographer or graphic designer, it's still really important to have everything on your computer backed up. Not only for the performance of your computer, but to protect yourself should you get the blue screen of death. More