full image - Repost: What’s the best way to deal with external storage and portability? (from Reddit.com, What’s the best way to deal with external storage and portability?)
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I am looking to get a 512GB M1 MBA for personal and work use. We don’t have Apple Stores where I live, so we rely on official retailers that are allowed to adjust prices based on market conditions. Unfortunately, market conditions are worse and the 512GB model is now practically about USD200 higher. With this I may have to settle with the 256GB model which is still within budget.Because of the smaller internal storage, I am looking for the best way to deal with external storage. Now, I am used to external storage for personal use. I have handfuls of hard drives in my drawer, a couple of Time Machine backup drives, and some offsite copies.But for work, it’s different. I have about 200GB plus worth of work files (mostly MS Office files, high res images, 4K videos, and high res PDFs with many layers or many pages.) I did once have them on an external drive but I found it a hassle to deal with when moving to meetings (keeping it plugged in and held securely in hand or insecurely on the keyboard deck, or unplugging it and hoping everything is intact when I plug it back in).This is my current setup and the workaround I had to not handle an external drive:ThinkPad T440 with 200GB SSD (hence the M1 MBA upgrade)At least half of the storage taken up by OS and apps for personal use~20GB work files on local storage (active items)~200GB work files in a 256GB SD Card “permanently” in the SD Card slot. R/W speed is not a concern due to file types, but random needs to access archived files quite often means I need constant access to these filesAs you can see, I’ve been spoiled by the fact that it has an SD Card slot which doesn’t need to be plugged in and out all the time. No dangling thing to deal with.Now here’s some things I’ve been thinking about as well: - Not my first Mac, but my first MacBook - 14” MBP is not an option, way too expensive - No, online storage is not an option (office internet is worse than my home internet, and the provided storage capacity is unusable) - No, network storage is not an option, as IT won’t let me put my own computer/drive on it, and corporate network security is a joke (everyone uses the same set of passwords) - It’s mostly a desktop setup affair, so there’s gonna be a dongle/hub that will deal with display and storage I/O - One of those flush fitting flash drives would be great, however, - With just two ports where do I plug it? In the second port? Or to the dongle? - Im looking to eventually move to more secure authentication so I’m looking to use the second port for a YubiKey - Meaning I have to likely plug the external drive in the dongle anyway, but then if I leave for a meeting that means unplugging the drive, unplugging the hub (which is going to also be connected to a VGA desk monitor), then plugging the drive into the first port, or worse, if it’s a presentation meeting, the other smaller dongle that also has display and power pass through portsI’m not a stranger to a lack of data ports. My T440 has literally one USB A port left working. But it has an SD Card slot and a DisplayPort and a VGA port and a dedicated power port, and an Ethernet port as a bonus. So these things I’m dealing with still don’t really push me into dongle life.If there’s a way you folks efficiently deal with two ports and dongles and external drives shuffling stuff around in an office mobility type situation, I’d really appreciate your help.
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