WIRED's updated 2026 guide to external drives leads with a warning: the AI race and memory-hungry data centers are driving storage prices sky-high. According to the guide, drive prices have quadrupled in the past six months, and 8-TB SSDs now sell for more than a new MacBook Air, which itself rose $200 due to surging memory costs. The guide notes prices are extremely volatile and could change after publication.
Despite the cost surge, WIRED still recommends traditional hard disk drives for desktop backups. The Western Digital Elements desktop drive is the top pick for bulk storage, with capacities from 1 TB to 26 TB and sequential write speeds around 120 MB/s on Windows. The guide says the Elements line performs similarly to Western Digital's higher-end My Book drives, making the basic version sufficient for most people.
For portable and phone backups, WIRED favors the Crucial X9 Pro SSD, a tiny 1.3-ounce drive that hit read speeds up to 1,110 MB/s in testing. The guide notes that Micron has discontinued the Crucial brand as it winds down its consumer business, but the drives remain available and are a way to get a reliable SSD at a reasonable price. A faster X10 Pro model is also listed for about $360, but WIRED says the X9 Pro is enough for most users.