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Though primarily a cloud-based ecosystem, Chrome OS and the Chromebooks it powers can still benefit in some ways from exapnded storage options.
As newer devices are shipping with eMMC storage soldered on the board, easy SSD upgrades are becoming a thing of the past. There are options, though.
SD cards aside, there are other, faster read/write options available for Chromebook users. Namely, USB flash storage.
I’ve had a 128GB Sandisk Ultra Fit drive for almost a year. When I was a Chromebook Pixel owner, I wanted to know that I could have some seriously fast removable storage for work tasks.
After a bit of research, I found this little guy. I didn’t want a bulky drive, cables, or something sticking out of the side of the device. This small drive is only as intrusive as a mouse or keyboard dongle. You could leave it plugged in and not really notice it.
For me, storage only becomes an issue with images and videos, and this drive’s read/write speed of around 150mbps handled anything I could throw at it.
If you use Crouton on your Chromebook to boot up Linux, it runs just as well in that environment, too.
Overall, I’ve been super impressed with it. Since I’ve mentioned it in a few videos, I figured it would be a good time to share and hopefully help a few of you out with a great storage option.
It’s also very, very inexpensive for a drive this tiny and dense. It is honestly crazy that they can fit 128GB of storage onto something so small and still sell it for so little.
The only thing I could wish for is a USB-C variant, and I have to imagine one is being worked on. The read/write would likely be faster, the small size similar, and dongle-free use on newer devices without standard USB ports would be fantastic. Until then, this is simply the best portable storage I’ve ever used.
