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Two 1TB storage deals: do you need a USB drive or external SSD?

Storage really is gettin' cheaper.

I sound like a bit of a broken record at the moment, but the fact is that storage in all forms is getting ridiculously cheap. With everything from USB drives to external and internal SSDs going for extremely good money, it's worth pondering what type of storage is right for you. Today seems like an ideal day to do so, given the pair of deals on offer that I've spotted.

Let's take the cheaper of the two options here. This Integral 1TB USB Drive is a bit of an anomaly in this category, given that other 1TB USB flash drives can cost more than double the amount, making it an especially tempting option. The price you pay here is speeds, with 100MB/s reads and 30MB/s writes making this a relatively slow option given the large size - although for something like a media drive, this is still noticeably faster than an external hard drive.

By comparison, the Samsung T7 Shield is one of our favourite gaming SSDs in the portable category, and for good reason, too. A lot of this is down to its blazing fast speeds - Samsung rates it for up to 1050MB/s reads and up to 1000MB/s reads respectively. This makes it an especially solid choice for playing games off if you're using a PC or older games console. Moreover, those speeds also help it to be suitable for more intensive workloads such as editing 4K video from it, something that wouldn't be possible on the Integral drive. This specific Shield variant is also the more rugged of the T7 series that Samsung offers, offering a shock-resistant rubber housing that protects it from drops from a height of up to three metres, as well as being IP65 certified, protecting it against the ingress of water and dust. The T7 Shield is a go anywhere and do anything SSD.

So, which one's right for you? Well, if you just want a convenient method of bringing files with you in a manner that won't take up too much space, then the Integral USB drive is a better bet given its lower price. However, if you hate waiting for files to copy over or want to run games or large video files from the drive directly, the Samsung T7 Shield is the better choice at not that much more money.

Whichever way you look at it, the fact you can get a whole terabyte of storage for such affordable prices is an amazing thing, and if you want it either in the form of a USB drive or in a rugged, portable SSD, then these two deals from Amazon should be ideal.

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