Security is evolving. From smart doorbells to intelligent lighting, homes are becoming more responsive. But what if your Vinily Fence Chicago could talk back—sending alerts when someone attempts to climb it or open a gate?
In this guide, you’ll learn how to build a basic Wi-Fi enabled fence alert system using microcontrollers like the ESP32 and simple sensors. It’s perfect for home automation enthusiasts, hobbyists, or even developers working on smart outdoor systems.
ESP32 or ESP8266 (microcontroller with built-in Wi-Fi)
Magnetic contact sensors or motion sensors
Buzzer or LED (for local alerts)
Jumper wires and breadboard
Power supply (USB or battery)
Arduino IDE
Optional: Integration with a mobile app or platform like Blynk or IFTTT
🧠 The Concept
The fence alert system works by detecting physical activity (such as the opening of a gate or crossing a boundary). The sensor triggers an alert, and the ESP32 sends a Wi-Fi signal to your phone or smart hub.
This setup is ideal for Vinily Fence in Chicago neighborhoods, where homeowners want non-invasive but effective perimeter alerts.
🛠️ Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Install the Arduino IDE and Board Support
Download the Arduino IDE.
Go to File > Preferences and add this board URL: https://dl.espressif.com/dl/package_esp32_index.json
You can use services like Blynk, IFTTT, or your own backend. For example, send an HTTP request to a webhook when a breach occurs.
// Replace with your own webhook URLWiFiClientclient;if(client.connect("yourwebhook.url",80)){client.println("GET /alert-path HTTP/1.1");client.println("Host: yourwebhook.url");client.println("Connection: close");client.println();}
Step 5: Test It
Simulate a fence opening or movement.
Watch the serial monitor and/or check your phone notification.
Adjust delay or debounce logic if needed.
🌐 Practical Use Cases
Gate access alerts
Perimeter breach detection
Smart home integration with Alexa/Google Assistant
This system can be adapted for any type of fence, including Vinily Fence Chicago il installations, offering homeowners an additional layer of proactive security.
🧩 Final Thoughts
Smart fencing is more than just automation—it’s about creating intelligent environments that respond to real-world events. Whether you’re a developer exploring IoT or a homeowner wanting custom security, this DIY system is a great entry point.
Ready to take it further? Add solar panels, camera triggers, or even integrate with machine learning models for behavior prediction.
Presentato nella Cittadella regionale il Festival delle Alici del Tirreno Cosentino che si terrà a Fuscaldo da giovedì a domenica.
A presentare l’iniziativa l’assessore regionale all’Agricoltura Gianluca Gallo, il primo cittadino di Fuscaldo, Giacomo Middea, l’agrichef Enzo Barbieri, l’imprenditore Mimmo Rosselli, che da un anno ha avviato l’azienda “Alici di Fuscaldo”, e da remoto il direttore artistico dell’evento, Antonio Spaccarotella.
“Come assessorato abbiamo voluto sostenere questa manifestazione perché questo prodotto ittico è un importante marcatore identitario del tirreno cosentino e di tutta la nostra regione. Grazie ad esperienze come queste, che sono veri e propri eventi che coinvolgono un ampio territorio vogliamo raccontare una Calabria diversa: in questo il comune Fuscaldo ci sta riuscendo benissimo proponendo eventi di promozione di qualità e di respiro nazionale. È necessario avere sempre di più l’ambizione alla qualità a costruire eventi capaci di attrarre e dimostrare che il passo avanti è stato fatto, con un approccio finalmente diverso e che vede i comuni collaborare insieme, come in questo caso, per costruire insieme un pezzo di futuro”.
Il sindaco di Fuscaldo, Giacomo Middea, ha illustrato il programma delle quattro serate che saranno caratterizzate da un mix di tradizione e spettacoli, parate colorate tra le vie del borgo della Marina, la musica delle street band, i giochi sospesi dei Mattacchioni Volanti ed il fascino senza tempo di statue viventi e mimi itineranti. E poi, il sapore autentico del gusto con “Alici in tavola – l’oro di Fuscaldo”: mostre interattive, show cooking dal vivo e racconti appassionanti tra piatti antichi e sapori innovativi.
Ed ancora, un’immersione virtuale e visiva nel blu, con il concorso fotografico “Pescatori di Stelle”, le mostre e gli incontri tematici dedicati al mare dove, quest’anno per la prima volta, si svolgeranno le gare di vela con la Fuscaldo’s Cup, dedicate a Bruno Giordano, il compianto procuratore della procura della repubblica di Paola che aveva dedicato buona parte della sua vita alla tutela dell’ambiente.
L’appuntamento è da giovedì a Fuscaldo Marina per quattro giorni di sapori e profumi del Tirreno con il Festival delle Alici.
Smart home device maker Futurehome is forcing its customers’ hands by suddenly requiring a subscription for basic functionality of its products.
Launched in 2016, Futurehome’s Smarthub is marketed as a central hub for controlling Internet-connected devices in smart homes. For years, the Norwegian company sold its products, which also include smart thermostats, smart lighting, and smart fire and carbon monoxide alarms, for a one-time fee that included access to its companion app and cloud platform for control and automation. As of June 26, though, those core features require a 1,188 NOK (about $116.56) annual subscription fee, turning the smart home devices into dumb ones if users don’t pay up.
“You lose access to controlling devices, configuring; automations, modes, shortcuts, and energy services,” a company FAQ page says.
Whistle, a subsidiary of Mars that makes pet trackers, has announced that it’s being acquired by Tractive. As part of the acquisition, Whistle trackers will stop working, but Tractive is offering to replace those trackers for free for a limited time.
The official shutdown date for Whistle’s pet trackers is August 31, 2025. Users will be able to request a replacement tracker until September 30, 2025 by providing their tracker’s serial number and then choosing a new Tractive tracker. Tractive will also credit pre-paid Whistle subscriptions to new Tractive accounts, and give anyone with a Whistle tracker without an active subscription two months of a Tractive subscription for free.
Whistle’s devices, like the Whistle Go Explore or Whistle Fit, focused on using GPS, Wi-Fi, and AT&T’s network to keep tabs on the whereabouts of your dogs and cats. Tractive goes further by offering similar tracking features alongside wearable-style health monitoring. If you pay for the company’s subscription — a Basic plan gets you all the most important features for $108 per year — you’ll be able to see your dog’s heart rate, respiratory rate and track if it’s barking more than usual.
If you’re willing to pay even more, Tractive offers a Premium plan for $120 per year that unlocks things like “worldwide coverage” for its trackers and the ability export the GPS data your tracker collects. It’s annoying to have to claim a new tracker and transfer accounts, but as far as acquisitions go, this seems like a best-case scenario.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/whistle-pet-trackers-are-shutting-down-next-month-212828325.html?src=rss
Sony is suing Tencent to attempt to stop the release of Light of Motiram, which Sony describes as a “slavish clone” of its Horizon series of games, as reported by Reuters. Light of Motiram was announced last year with a trailer featuring an aesthetic that’s quite similar to the Horizon franchise — including huge robot animals and even a title font that resembles the Horizon games.
In its complaint, Sony alleges that “unlawful copying of the protected audiovisual elements of the Horizon games, as well as its deliberate adoption of a confusingly similar character mark, constitutes both copyright and trademark infringement that should be enjoined immediately.”
According to the lawsuit, Tencent started developing Light of Motiram in 2023. At the Game Developers Conference in March 2024, Tencent allegedly pitched Sony on a proposal that would have its Aurora Studios subsidiary “develop a Horizon sequel game under the requested license,” which Sony rejected. “Apparently, Tencent was undeterred by SIE’s refusal to license its Horizon intellectual property,” Sony says.
According to the game’s Steam page, Light of Motiram’s developer and publisher is Polaris Quest. In the lawsuit, Sony alleges that “Upon information and belief, Tencent Shanghai does business under the names ‘Aurora Studios’ and/or ‘Polaris Quest.’”
Sony says that it “had discussions with Tencent” to informally try to “resolve its concern that Light of Motiram violated its intellectual property rights.” However, Sony alleges that Tencent “again sought to license the Horizon intellectual property,” to which it “communicated clearly and unequivocally that it would not license the Horizon assets to Tencent, objected to Light of Motiram, and insisted that it be withdrawn.”
Tencent didn’t reply to a request for comment.
This isn’t the only high-profile lawsuit over allegedly similar video games. Last year, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld-developer Pocketpair. Pocketpair said in May that it had to remove features from the game due to the lawsuit.
In this article I will introduce some of the most useful object-oriented design patterns. Design patterns are solutions to common problems that show up over and over again. These problems will show up in many different contexts but always have the same problem at the root.
A design pattern attempts to describe an effective solution to the problem in a generic way so that it can be applied to a specific set of circumstances.
I will use Java to build an example of each pattern. I’m assuming that you have some programming experience in Java. In particular, you should be (at least somewhat) familiar with the concepts of inheritance and polymorphism. These design patterns really show the power of inheritance and polymorphism, so if you are just learning about these topics this is a great opportunity to dig deeper.
What if you not a Java programmer? If you are familiar with any Object-Oriented language you will probably still get a lot out of the examples. Give it a shot!
To make design patterns more approachable, I developed an interactive tutorial that uses annotated code playbacks to walk through key design pattern features step-by-step.
Each design pattern is presented as a code playback that shows how a program changes over time along with my explanation about what’s happening. This format helps you focus on the reasoning behind the code changes.
You can access the free ‘book’ of code playbacks here:
To view a code playback, click on the comments in the left panel. Each comment updates the code in the editor and highlights any changes. Read the explanation and study the code. If you get stuck, use the AI assistant like a tutor to help explain what is happening in the code.
For more information about code playbacks, you can watch a short demo here.
Key Design Patterns You Should Know
Strategy Pattern
The Strategy Pattern is used to define a ‘family’ of algorithms, encapsulate each one, and make them interchangeable. Software developers use the Strategy pattern when they know there are many different ways of accomplishing some behavior. Rather than include all the different ways in a single class, they separate them out into individual classes and plug them in when necessary.
This program creates some classes to hold student grades. Some instructors like to adjust the entire course’s grades to make them higher. Some instructors do this by dropping every student’s lowest grade. Other instructors ‘curve’ each assignment. Since there are several different options, I will use the Strategy Pattern to isolate them and let the client choose which one they prefer.
Start by looking at the Assignment, Student, and Course classes. Once you are familiar with the core classes, watch as I change the code to implement two different approaches to curving the grades using the Strategy Pattern:
There are times when you need to make sure there is only one instance of a class and it is accessible everywhere in your code. This is the problem that the Singleton Pattern solves.
In this program, I will create a class that generates random numbers. I will rely on Java’s built-in Random class but will be able to reproduce the exact same sequence of random numbers when in ‘test mode’. I’ll make sure that there is only one instance of this random number generator using the Singleton Pattern:
Often, we’ll create whole/part containment tree structures. For example, in a file system there are simple files. I call these simple elements, primitives. We can group primitives together to form larger composites. Files can be grouped into directories. These composites (directories) can be grouped into still larger composites, and so on.
We could treat composites and primitives differently. But it often makes sense to treat them the same. Having to distinguish between the object types makes the application more complex.
The Composite Pattern describes how to use recursive composition so that clients don’t need to make this distinction.
This program creates classes for printing a hierarchical collection of files and directories using the Composite Pattern:
Sometimes we want to add responsibilities to individual objects, not an entire class. The Decorator Pattern allows us to create decorators to provide a flexible alternative to inheritance for extending a class.
In this program, I create an interface for logging messages while a program is running. I use the interface to create a ConsoleLogger that prints the log messages to the screen. Then I start to add decorator objects that surround, or wrap, the ConsoleLogger. I add decorators to attach the date, author name, and time to the log messages using the Decorator Pattern:
Sometimes there are systems that react differently based on the ‘state’ that they are in. A state is a period of time during which a system will react to events according to certain rules. This state-based behavior is implemented using the State Pattern.
I’ll show you how to move through the characters in a string and parse it to account for quotes within it. For example, the following string:
There are may ways to accomplish this in Java, but I’ll show a state-based approach. When a single quote is encountered within a string I will use that as an event and move between different states using the State Pattern:
The Observer Pattern is used when the update of a single piece of data in one object needs to be propagated to a collection of other objects.
For example, when the value of a cell in a spreadsheet changes, several other cells may need to be notified of that change so that they can update themselves. Similarly, in a social network application when a user makes a post, all of their friends need to be notified so that their feeds can be updated. Both of these are essentially the same problem that the Observer Pattern solves.
This program creates a class to hold a time in a day called MyTime. Then I create two different types of Observers that will be notified when the time changes. The two observers will re-display the time every time it changes using the Observer Pattern:
Sometimes we design a set of objects that have a client/server relationship but later decide that the two objects should not interact directly. This program shows how to use the Proxy Pattern to place some new functionality in between two previously cooperating classes.
I create a Card and Deck class for card games. The Deck starts out being hosted on the same machine as the Driver. Then I split the Driver and the Deck class so that they can be run on different machines using the Proxy Pattern:
The Factory Pattern provides a mechanism for creating ‘families’ of related objects without specifying their concrete classes. Instantiating concrete objects in an application makes it hard to change those objects later.
In this program, I will create two different families of classes for a help system for two different computing platforms using the Factory Pattern:
The Visitor Pattern lets you add functionality to a hierarchy of classes without changing its interface.
The reason why this is important is that there are times when we cannot change an existing hierarchy of classes. Perhaps I am using a hierarchy of classes that I am not in control of but I want to add some new functionality to it anyway. This is where the Visitor Pattern comes in.
In this program, I’ll add functionality to the File and Directory classes from the Composite program that I wrote earlier with minimal changes to those classes.
I create a visitor to count the number of files and directories in a topmost directory. Then I write a visitor to collect only the filenames in a directory including its sub-directories using the Visitor Pattern:
I hope you enjoyed learning about object-oriented design patterns. If you are interested in other programming paradigms, you can check out some of my other ‘books’ here.
If you’d like to support my work and help keep Playback Press free for all, consider donating using GitHub Sponsors. I use all of the donations for hosting costs. Your support helps me continue creating educational content like this. Thank you!
What started in 2006 with just 40 farm families in western Kenya has grown into a powerful movement. Today, One Acre Fund serves 5 million farm families across ten countries in eastern and southern Africa. Their ambitious goal? By 2030, they aim to support 10 million farm families annually. How? By using open source technology and AI, aiming to generate an astounding $1 billion in new revenue for these communities.
For smallholder farmers — those typically working with an acre or less of land — intensifying agriculture is crucial for their prosperity. This process of producing more food with the same amount of land, not only brings higher crop yields, but stimulates the economy, strengthens community, and enables farmers to scale. One Acre Fund’s core mission is to empower these farmers, providing a direct pathway out of poverty. But unlike traditional microfinance, they don’t just loan cash. Instead, they provide vital farm resources like fertilizer and seed, plus training and services, directly equipping farmers with the tools they need to succeed. They also help the farmers they serve to improve their soil health and plant trees to not only increase yields but also help farmers be more resilient to weather changes due to climate change.
In the past, farmers used to fear using technology. But, as we provide training to them, they’re now eager to use it.
Blaise Murame, Regional Lead, One Acre Fund
Technology is at the heart of One Acre Fund’s rapid growth. They’ve transitioned from an entirely analog approach — meeting farmers in the field with paper records — to a highly digitized system. This transformation has revolutionized their operations, making everything from logistics and delivery to farmer registration and the development of training materials more efficient. Farmers, initially hesitant, are now eager to embrace this tech, after receiving resources and tools on time and achieving their goals faster than ever before.
Growing products to empower farmers
A significant part of One Acre Fund’s tech leap comes from their adoption of GitHub Copilot.
Since the coming of GitHub Copilot, the time it used to take us three weeks, that development work can be finished within a week. That’s affecting our goals – we’re able to set more goals than last year.
Yididiya Gebredingel, Developer, One Acre Fund
By introducing GitHub Copilot, One Acre Fund has been able to move much faster on their development, and they can focus on the pieces that are actually creating impact in the field. This acceleration has enabled them to set and achieve more goals, with developers completing projects three times faster and over 30% of their work being assisted by AI.
As a nonprofit, working with some of the world’s poorest populations means operating on razor-thin margins.This makes the cost-effectiveness of their solutions paramount. Open source technology provides the ideal balance, offering both “solution maturity and solution flexibility” without the burden of exponentially growing license fees as they scale. Embracing the open source community is a strategic move for One Acre Fund, as they’ve migrated most of their core operational systems to open source to leverage collaborative development and community support.
As a nonprofit, we can’t tolerate license fees that will grow exponentially as we scale. Open source gives us the right balance between solution maturity and solution flexibility.
Sarah Hylden, Global Director of Operations, One Acre Fund
Ultimately, One Acre Fund believes that if you have an intervention that works to create a sustainable pathway out of poverty for farmers, and you know it works, then you have a moral obligation to scale it. And with the help of GitHub Copilot, they are doing just that — moving faster and making a greater impact in the lives of millions of farm families.
The study found that a combination of exercise, healthy diet and other behaviors led to cognitive benefits. How much intense guidance is required was unclear, experts said.
External USB/Thunderbolt drives (aka direct-attached storage, or DAS) 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 fast internal storage. They’re also extremely handy for transporting data between locations and devices.
While auxiliary storage and transport are great reasons to buy an external drive, let’s not forget the all-important role an external drive plays for backup — either as the primary backup medium, or the secondary backup to an internal backup drive.
Restoring from local storage is far, far faster than pulling down your data from the web, which is why we are so keen on backing up to an external drive. If your time is important to you, that is.
Whatever your intent, the following are the best external drives we found through our extensive testing. There is something for every purpose in this list.
Not everyone wants or needs to spend extra for 20Gbps USB drive performance. The Crucial X9 strikes a compelling balance between 10Gbps performance and affordability that should please the majority of users. In our benchmark tests, it traded top scores with the SK Hynix Beetle (our runner-up choice below), but at a significantly lower cost — making it an indisputable win-win for consumers.
It’s also handsome, described by our reviewer as “a svelte object of desire.” More importantly, it feels well made, and is rated for IP55 dust and spray resistance, so you don’t have to baby this portable drive when you take it into harm’s way.
Alternative option: The Crucial X9 performs neck-and-neck with the SK Hynix Beetle X31 — a handsome little drive in its own right. Previously, this drive was the more pricey of the two, giving the Crucial X9 a slight edge. But it appears the Beetle X31 might be nearing the end of its production life because we are seeing it at a significant savings — as low as $85 for 1TB. This is great news for bargain hunters while supplies last.
The Crucial X6 Portable SSD is square to be hip (search Huey Lewis). Or placed in your hip pocket, at any rate. In a sea of portable SSDs whose shape and sometimes sharp edges makes them a literal pain when situated in your shirt or trousers, the thin, rounded-edge X6 is a sigh of relief. It’s not state-of-the-art fast, but it’s fast enough for most users and extremely affordable.
There’s something to be said for the thumb drive form factor. It’s eminently portable, being both small and eliminating the necessity of a connector cable. It’s also versatile as it can slot into the ubiquitous USB-A port.
The SK Hynix Tube T31 combines all that thumb-drive convenience with SSD performance, for the best of the both worlds.
Utilizing 10Gbps NVMe storage internally, the wee Tube T31 performs like a cable-attached SSD, and definitively outperformed other thumb drives in its class. And while it’s priced relatively high compared to a standard thumb drive, it’s priced competitively for its performance.
There’s no better option if fast and cable-free storage is what you’re after.
Alternative option: The Seagate Ultra Compact SSD isn’t quite as fast as the Tube T31, but it’s close. What’s more, it comes with some handy extras, such as free 6-month plans for Dropbox Backup and Mylio Photos, as well as being eligible for free data recovery, making it a compelling alternative.
The competition is fierce in the top tier of 20Gbps external drives, with name-brand contenders trading wins up and down our benchmark charts. Nevertheless, a winner is a winner, and cumulatively, the Lexar SL600 edged out our previous champ, Crucial’s X10 Pro, by a hair.
On top of that, it comes in a uniquely shaped form factor, complete with an opening to accommodate a lanyard, if that’s how you roll. You can even take the highly portable drive’s design a step further by opting for the SL660 variant that comes with RGB lighting around its miniature handle. The SL600 is backed by a five-year warranty — two years longer than the norm for external drives.
When performance is this closely matched among products, the determining factor is price. In that respect also, the SL600 is neck-and-neck with the Crucial X10 Pro, and as of this writing, priced slightly to significantly cheaper than many of its competitors — particularly at the 2TB level.
Rated for 20Gbps and selling for $80 with 1TB of storage, the Teamgroup M200 is an attractive (in a military fashion) external drive for the budget-conscious performance enthusiast.
It might not be as cheap as the Crucial X6, but for the extra outlay you get outstanding everyday performance. In many tests, it’s the fastest 20Gbps drive we’ve ever tested. At just 4.13-inches long and 2.18-inches wide and weighing under 3 ounces, it’s also extremely portable and its slick combat-styling will appeal to gamers.
A USB4 external SSD isn’t for everyone. Not only does your PC need to support the spec in order to take advantage of the 40Gbps transfers, but you pay a premium for the privilege.
If you’re ready to enter the club, the Adata SE920 will reward you with the fastest USB4 performance we’ve experienced, and at a much more affordable price than our previous pick for USB4, the OWC Express 1M2 — we’re talking $180 for a 1TB Adata SE920 versus $250 for the OWC drive. And if you want a lot of capacity, the Adata SE920 comes with up to 4TB, for $500.
We were also impressed by the SE920’s nifty built-in fan, which is activated when you slide open the enclosure as shown above. This kept our drive noticeably free of heat during our benchmark tests.
The SE920 is also quite portable at 4.13 inches long by 2.52-inches wide by 0.62-inches thick, and 7 ounces — another advantage it has over the bulkier OWC Express 1M2. A clear choice for our top USB 4 external SSD.
Alternative option: You can get record-breaking performance by rolling your own USB 4 external SSD, using Ugreen’s CM642 enclosure. In our tests, the $110 enclosure combined with an NVMe SSD bested the performance of the two external USB 4 SSDs above.
As the name suggests, unlike many of the external drives on this list, the SanDisk Desk Drive isn’t particularly portable. Not only is it too bulky for a pocket or laptop bag, it also requires an AC adapter.
That however, doesn’t detract from its utility, as the Desk Drive is really aimed at users with more sedentary workflows for auxiliary storage and backup. That’s also evident in the fact that it only ships in 4GB and 8GB capacities, priced competitively at $280 and $500, respectively.
Granted, that’s a lot more per-gigabyte than you’d pay for a backup hard drive. But with the Desk Drive you get brisk 10Gbps performance, and the assurance that comes from an SSD’s lack of moving parts, i.e. susceptibility to shocks. In other words, its speed, ruggedness, and reliability make it worth more an HDD.
We can forgive the cumbersome name, and the fact that this drive, misleadingly, doesn’t actually use a USB-C connector, because there are other more substantial ways that it pleases us.
For starters, the WD My Passport, Works with USB-C offers a ton of capacity — up to 6TB — and at a far more affordable price per terabyte than one can get from an SSD (around $30/TB versus twice that for the latter). This makes the WD My Passport a natural fit for backup needs, particularly since those can be timed during off hours, mitigating the need for an SSDs superior speeds.
As for the misleading moniker, the My Passport does indeed work with USB-C, but it’s by way of the drive’s standard SuperSpeed Micro-B port, using the included Micro-B to Type-A cable and a bundled Type-A to USB-C adapter. Mind you, WD’s My Passport Ultra series, which actually do feature a USB-C port, don’t perform any faster than this drive, and cost a bit more.
In fact, the My Passport performs on par with the best of 2.5-inch hard drives we’ve tested, while being the best deal. If it’s a portable, high-capacity hard drive that you’re after, this is the one to pick.
SSDs have certainly been a game changer in storage, but there are still times when a hard drive is the right tool for the job — and an unbeatable value. Such as when you need more capacity for your digital stuff than an SSD can provide.
Enter the 3.5-inch Seagate Expansion Desktop, which delivers up to 24TB of capacity — three times the current maximum for SSDs. It also delivers twice the sustained transfer rate of 2.5-inch external hard drives — our 16TB test unit read and wrote at close to 280MBps.
As mentioned, all this storage comes at a very competitive price point, hovering around $20 per terabyte, compared to the $70 per terabyte an SSD costs. Our only caveat is that HDDs are more fragile, and important data on them should be backed up regularly.
As we said in our review of the drive: “If you deal with large amounts of data, you can’t beat a high-capacity hard drive for gathering it into one place.” This is the drive we’d pick.
The PNY Duo Link V3 is a good-performing 10Gbps thumb drive with a handy dual-link; the Addlink P30‘s uber-small form factor, good performance, and super-low price make it one of my favorite USB4 SSDs; the Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD with USB4 is handsome, rugged, feels great in your mitts, and is decently affordable for USB4 — but connection issues might affect some users; the Seagate Ultra Compact SSD 10Gbps USB thumb drive delivers far better performance than generic 5Gbps or 400Mbps types and comes with some perks, such as free data recovery; the Lexar Go w/Hub is a pricey 10Gbps mobile drive that adds up to 2TB of storage and extra USB ports to your phone; the Corsair EX400U is not the fastest 40Gbps SSD out there, but this light and compact drive is very affordable and far more compatible across PCs and Macs than 20Gbps USB 3.2×2 SSDs.
How we test
Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11, 64-bit running on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of memory total). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are integrated to the back panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB of total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro which also runs the OS.
Each test is performed on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This can be less of a factor with the current crop of SSDs with far faster late-generation NAND.
Caveat: The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped and to the capacity tested. SSD performance can and will vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching. Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report, by all means, let us know.
Why you should trust PCWorld for VPN reviews and buying advice
It’s in our name! PCWorld’s reviewers have been testing PC hardware for decades. Our storage evaluations are thorough and rigorous, pushing the limits of every product — from performance benchmarks to the practicalities of daily use. As PC users ourselves, we know what makes a product stand out. Only the best external drives make this list.
Who curated this article?
Jon Jacobi has witnessed storage morph from punch cards and tape to solid state. He’s been using and testing HDDs, SATA SSDs, and NVMe SSDs for PCWorld for well over two decades. To paraphrase a well-known commercial, you might say he’s seen a thing or two.
How to choose the best external drive
Yes, USB 4 will provide the same massive throughput as Thunderbolt 3 at lower prices eventually, and likely far more products too.
Capacity versus price
For most consumers, the primary shopping criteria for external storage are capacity and price. However, while you might think that the lowest-cost drives provide the most value — most often, they don’t. In fact, dollar for dollar, cheaper low-capacity drives have always been the worst deal in terms of price per terabyte.
You can see the phenomena in the charts below where we compare the popular WD Elements desktop hard drive’s available capacities and prices. You’re paying more than twice as much per terabyte for the lowest-capacity drive versus the next step up. It’s almost as bad on the WD Elements Portable drive.
The worst value for an external hard drive is typically the lowest-capacity drive.
IDG
The best “value,” as you can see, typically means the most capacious hard drives. But it also means higher total cost, and not everyone needs maximum capacity.
How much storage capacity do you need?
So how much storage do you actually need? For backup, we recommend a drive that’s at least twice the capacity of the total amount of data residing on your PC’s internal storage.
If you have 1TB of storage in your PC, a 2TB drive allows you to make a full backup while keeping previous versions, as well as additional differential and incremental backups. I.e., the larger the capacity, the more backups over a longer period of time you can keep, or the more PCs you can back up to the same drive.
While a desktop hard drive (read 3.5-inch) provides far more capacity (up to 30TB currently if you’re a data center), it also requires a power cable, weighs more, and generally won’t be as shock resistant as a portable 2.5-inch hard drive. The latter is designed to take bumps, even when powered up. Then again, if you really want rugged — go the SSD route.
Interface
The vast majority of external drives today are USB drives. However, USB comes in many flavors: 5Gbps, 10Gbps, 20GBps, and — eventually with USB 4 — 40Gbps, as with Thunderbolt 3/4. Ignore the version number (3.x) and look for the speed. BTW, add two zeroes to any of those numbers and you have the approximate real-world MBps.
The USB Forum has changed its nomenclature to indicate throughput speed — SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps (formerly USB 3.x gen 1), SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps (formerly USB 3.x gen 2), and SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps (formerly USB 3.2 2×2). For the sake of brevity (and our sanity), we generally shorten those to, for example, USB 10Gbps, 10Gbps USB, 10Gbps etc.
All single USB hard drives use the slower USB 5Gbps standard. No hard drive, unless combined with other drives in RAID 0 or above, can saturate even the 5Gbps interface (roughly 500MBps real-world after overhead).
Where SuperSpeed 10Gbps/20Gbps, USB 4, or Thunderbolt are of value is with the aforementioned RAID hard drive setups, or more likely, an SSD. USB 10Gbps is fast enough for most users, and getting cheaper by the week. A 10Gbps Samsung T7 Shield can be had for $80 in its 1TB capacity.
Faster USB 20Gbps (Gen 2×2) doubles throughput, but moves you into a higher-price bracket, with the Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSD costing $100 for only 500GB of storage. Although far faster than 5/10Gbps, there still aren’t a lot of 20Gbps USB 3.2×2/USB4 ports out there.
Thunderbolt 3, the newer Thunderbolt 4 (almost exactly the same thing with stricter implementation requirements), and the upcoming Thunderbolt 5 are the highest-performing interfaces for external storage. The key negatives are the premium pricing and a general lack of compatibility with the far more popular USB.
Note that Thunderbolt ports generally support everything up to USB 3.2 and even USB 4, but interestingly, not 20Gbps USB 3.2×2, which will perform at 10Gbps. This may change with Thunderbolt 5, but don’t buy a USB 3.2×2 drive unless you have that specific port type.
There are dual Thunderbolt/USB SSDs available such as the Sandisk Pro-G40. The G40 is pricey at $160 for 1TB, but a fantastic drive for those who can afford it. Pure Thunderbolt external SSDs can be even pricier, as they’re almost all sold by Mac-oriented boutique vendors such as OWC and Sabrent.
The top drive uses the older, slower Mini-USB interface. The second drive features the connector that replaced it: Micro B SuperSpeed. The Orange drive features both a SuperSpeed Micro B and Thunderbolt 2 (mini DisplayPort connector). The bottom drive features USB-C or USB Type C.
Connections
The type of port you find on external drives varies (see the image above), though the industry is gradually (and thankfully) consolidating on the orientation-agnostic Type-C connector. Here’s the list of connectors you might find on your drive:
USB 3 Micro-B is the wider, flatter port that’s still very common on many lower-cost portable and desktop external hard drives. It’s actually the same Micro USB port used on your phone, but with more data lines to hit USB 3.0 speeds. It’ll do 5Gbps and is fine for hard drives and SATA (internally) SSDs. Micro-B cables are generally Type-A on the PC end.
USB 3 Type-B is the larger, squarer version of USB 3.0 Micro B. Type B ports are becoming rare, though you might find one on older 5.25-inch enclosures, printers, and scanners. It supports speeds up to 5Gbps and cables are generally Type-A on the PC side.
USB Type-C or simply Type-C is the latest USB connector and the one the world is standardizing on. It’s small, easy to insert, and you don’t have to worry about which side faces up as with Type-A.
Keep in mind that Type-C refers only to the connector itself. What is carried over the wires varies greatly: USB 2.0 High Speed (480Mbps) to USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 20Gbps, as well as USB 4 and Thunderbolt 3 and any combination of them.
USB Type-A: You won’t find this familiar rectangular port on any drive, but you will still find it on plenty of PCs and laptops as well as the male version on the other end of most Type-B and Type-C adapter cables.
Thunderbolt 2 is dead at this point. It’s found on older Macs, but even Apple put it out to pasture in 2017. There’s no need to invest in a Thunderbolt 2 drive unless it’s for legacy support issues. That said…
…Apple sells a bi-directional Thunderbolt 1/2 to 3 adapter if you need to connect the one generation to the other. The adapter does not, however, carry power, so bus-powered external drives (no power jack) will require a powered dock.
eSATA is another legacy port that’s disappeared from newer devices. Created for attaching external storage to your computer’s SATA bus, eSATA was a cheap way in its day to move beyond the toddling 60MBps performance of USB 2.0.
5Gbps USB 3.0 put the last nail in eSATA’s coffin. As with Thunderbolt 2, the only reason to invest in an eSATA drive is for use with older computers.
Multiple drives for backup?
We discussed the rule of three for backup, but while the cloud is a great offsite option, you can also manage that with multiple external drives — storing them in different locations. Once upon a time, I used to regularly send copies of my recordings to my mom’s for safe-keeping.
If you’re using your external storage as a primary repository for important data, then you should have a second drive as a copy. You might even consider a dual-drive enclosure and run them mirrored, i.e. the same set of data written simultaneously to both. SSDs aren’t nearly as prone to mishap as hard drives, but even then…
HDDs (hard disk drives) have been around for more than 50 years. They are essentially boxes containing spinning platters with read/write arms that skim across them to detect the orientation of, or re-align particles in, the magnetic material that coats the platters.
SSDs (solid state drives), on the other hand, use flash memory and have no moving parts inside the drive. Data is instead stored in cells — aka, voltage traps — which are interconnected in a matrix. The matrix approach allows for data to be pushed or pulled to/from many different places at once and significantly increases both read and write speed — on the order of 100 times faster these days.
Generally speaking, SSDs are a better bet for your external drives due to their smaller size, faster speeds, and far superior ruggedness and durability. The main drawback to SSDs is that you pay quite a bit more per terabyte of storage. As technology and production techniques improve, the price of SSDs has and will continue to drop.
2.
How often should you back up your data?
Ideally, you should back up your data as often as possible. This is especially true if you are working on an important project or have data that you absolutely cannot afford to lose.
If you have your external hard drive connected to your computer at all times, it is a good idea to automate the backup process and have the drive back up your data as it changes, or every hour or so. Otherwise, connect and back up at least once a day. See our roundups of the best Windows backup software and the best online backup services to learn more.
3.
Why does Windows say my external drive is smaller than specified?
This is because of the difference between the binary and decimal number systems, their nomenclatures, and a Microsoft miscue. Your 2TB drive indeed has two trillion bytes of storage, and if you look a the byte count that Windows displays in a drive’s properties dialog, this should be what you see. This in the International System of Units (SI/decimal) is two terabytes, or 2TB. This is the standard language vendors use as consumers are far more familiar with base 10.
However, Windows uses the newer International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) binary multiples 2^10 (Kibibyte/KiB), 2^20 (Mebibyte/MiB), 2^30 (Gibibyte/Gib). Binary multiples are larger numbers (one KiB is 1,024) so when Windows divides the total bytes by the IEC system, the you get something like 1.8TiB for a 2TB drive. Alas, Windows labels this as 1.8TB, misleading the user.
Other reasons you might not see as much available storage in the properties tab are formatting or partitioning. The file system uses some storage for file location and size info, etc. Also, some drives come with a small partition containing software so the main partition will be smaller than the drive’s total capacity.
4.
How long does an external drive last?
The lifespan of an external hard drive can be anywhere from three minutes to 10 years depending on make and model, as well as the amount of use and operating environment. They’re mechanical devices subject to wear and susceptible to shock damage, so they should be kept cool and treated gently. Reliability has increased dramatically over the last decade.
Alas, judging the likely lifespan of an external hard drive is a crap shoot. Of course check the warranty, but the MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) number is generally considered fantasy within the industry. Peruse user feedback which can provide insight into long term usage, and keep your ears peeled for strange noises, your fingers crossed, and don’t drop the thing! Our best guess is that you should get at least five years with careful handling.
SSDs don’t wear out or break mechanically, but their cells can only be written to so many times. SSDs generally have a TBW (terabytes that may be written) rating, but this is rarely provided by vendors for external SSDs. Hint: They may not use the same SSD inside throughout the product lifespan.
Most internal M.2 NVMe TLC SSDs are rated for around 600TBW per terabyte, and QLC types for around 200TBW, though the type of NAND in use is also rarely provided by vendors. That’s a lot of data, and a lot of SSDs are rated well below what they might achieve. You can guesstimate by using a utility to see how much data you write to an SSD a day and then doing the math.
External SSD warranties are generally between three and five years, but as with all such things, it’s a financial risk calculation for the company. As is the TBW. Our best guess based on experience is perhaps a decade. However, certain models have had issues long before that — generally due to a flaw or failure in the bridge chip or controller.
5.
How do external drives fail?
There are a few of ways that an external hard drive might fail. The motor might quit, the read/write heads might crash into the platter surface due to shock while operating, or the electronics might overheat and go belly up. You might get a warning in the form of strange noises such as a scraping or grinding sound. If the data is particularly important, turn it off immediately and call a recovery service. That scraping sound may be the coating on the platter being removed by a crashed head. This is unrecoverable. If you keep running it, back it up immediately and replace it.
SSDs generally go belly up due to the increasingly rare controller failure, which is a relatively easy fix/reset for someone who knows the SSD’s internals such as a recovery service. SSDs will also eventually wear out, though this only precludes further writing to the unit. You can still read what’s on the drive, so it’s not the disaster a HDD failure can be.
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