
The last time I used an external HDD was back in college; I had two 3.5-inch external HDDs to store most of the data, but I wanted something that was portable and didn't need an auxiliary power source, so I got a 2.5-inch Western Digital drive. It was decent enough at the beginning, but it didn't take long for the connector to start acting up — it would lose connection every time I looked at it — and the drive was slow even by early 2010s standards.

In Hardwired, AC Senior Editor Harish Jonnalagadda delves into all things hardware, including phones, audio products, storage servers, and routers.