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The Best USB Drives & Portable Storage

The top-rated usb drives and portable storage on Amazon UK right now: SanDisk 128GB Ultra Flair USB 3 (best overall), SanDisk 64 GB Cruzer Blade USB 2 (runner-up), Netac 64GB USB 2 (best value). All are ranked by genuine customer ratings and review volume, with live Amazon prices.

The right storage depends entirely on the job. For moving files between machines or a quick handover, a cheap USB flash drive is all you need. For backing up a whole laptop or storing a photo and video library, a portable hard drive gives you far more capacity per pound. And for speed-critical work or console game storage, a portable SSD is worth the premium. Match capacity and speed to the task rather than overspending, and always keep an important backup in more than one place.

How often this category is on offer: we record Amazon's price once a day. Of the 30 products here with at least two weeks of checks since 4 Sept, 6 showed a discount of 10% or more at every check, 14 never did, and 10 dipped in and out. How we count this

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Top Data Storage products

30 products

Frequently asked questions

USB flash drive or external hard drive?

Use a flash drive for portability and moving a few gigabytes around; use an external hard drive when you need to back up a whole computer or store large media libraries, because it gives you far more capacity for the money. Many people keep both for different jobs.

Is a portable SSD worth it over a hard drive?

For most backup and archiving, a traditional portable hard drive is cheaper per gigabyte and perfectly fine. Pay for a portable SSD when speed matters: editing video off the drive, running console games, or transferring huge files often, where its much faster read and write speeds save real time.

How much storage do I actually need?

For documents and photos, 128GB to 256GB is plenty on a flash drive or card. For a full laptop backup or a large photo and video collection, look at 1TB or more on a portable drive. Buying a size up from what you need now is usually cheaper than upgrading later.