Jon Jacobi

External USB/Thunderbolt drives are a super-convenient way to quickly back up your important files, as well as store any data that you don’t need on your computer’s internal storage. They’re also an extremely handy way to transport data between locations and devices. While any of these would be a great reason to pick up an external drive, the advantages of having reliable backup is the number-one reason your setup isn’t complete without one. Why? Chances are you have important data on your PC t…

Samsung's new hybrid PCIe 4 x4, PCI 5 x2 990 EVO plus is significantly faster than its plain 990 EVO predecessor in most ways.

The best free and paid backup software for your Windows system, disks, and data.

Those capture-the-accident cameras you hang from your windshield come in a myriad of flavors--here's how we separate the dash cam wheat from the chaffe

The Teamgroup R-Force A440 Lite SSD is a merely a decent performer, and it's up against stiff competition — including the company's own G50.

We review the best 1080p and 4K dash cams. They record what’s ahead (and sometimes what’s behind)—just the sort of backup you want in the midst of harried traffic.

Using a somewhat odd 4:3, 2592x1944 resolution, the M500 captured some of the best day and night video I've seen. But you must register and run the app to activate the dash cam before you can use it.

Marketed directly at the Playstation crowd, the Game Drive SSD plays off its good looks and good performance. You do, however, pay for the pleasure.

Online backup is an essential hedge against physical data disaster. No matter if it’s a technical failure, an act of malice, or an act of nature, you never know when all the files and folders you have stored on your PC will be threatened. While we always recommend keeping a local backup for quick restores (see our roundup of the best Windows backup software for desktop solutions), uploading your data to an online backup service can be a reliable way to cover your bases. After all, the “backup r…

Integrated GPS and phone connectivity highlight Rove's affordable R2-4K Dual two-channel dash cam. But captures were strictly average.

While its synthetic benchmark numbers were strictly Gen 4, the Kingston NV3 was faster in our real-world transfers than many DRAM designs, including Gen 5 types.

Nexar's Beam2, two-channel dash cam is stylish, capable, takes good captures, and uploads them to the cloud via its integrated LTE. But it's got some downsides, too.

If you're looking for easy disaster recovery that migrates your data and apps to a new installation, Zinstall FullBack is what you seek. But it's a pricey solution at $180 a year.

Except for super-long transfers, the Crucial P310 is the fastest 2230 SSD we've tested -- and by a large margin.

Macrium Reflect is one of our favorite easy-to-use, feature-filled imaging backup programs. It rivals R-Drive Image in our experience for long-lived success.

The 70mai A510 is a very good front/rear combo for the price. The front captures are top-notch, and the rear captures aren't too far behind.

The Arc is one of the few dash cams Thinkware markets with a display. As such, it went all in and made it touch. Marry that with great front and rear day captures, and you've got a very nice product. Just not at night.

The DRAM-less WD Blue SN5000 PCIe 4, NVMe SSD delivers very good performance at very low price points

Cloud backup services are the OG of online storage. Long before internet bandwidth allowed you to work online, there were services dedicated to providing that all-important third copy in the backup triad: the original data, a copy of the data, and a copy of the data in a remote location. The hallmark of these services are client apps that upload (and restore if necessary) data to from the remote server farm. Most people are already using a cloud backup service, though they may not think of it…

Modern external computer data storage technologies (DAS, or Direct Attached Storage) run the gamut from USB hard drives, to optical discs (yes, still), to USB thumb drives, to the latest, greatest NVMe SSDs in high-speed Thunderbolt or USB 4 enclosures. PCWorld has been reviewing external storage since the 1980s and the era of floppy drives, though these days we stick with SSDs and the occasional hard drive. Everything else seems, well... quaint. Not to mention, drearily slow. What does PCWo…