I saw a review on a rugged SSD, and it got me thinking about local storage. Over the holidays I needed to scan something from a device at the ranch, but to get the image to my computer, I needed a flash drive. It took me 10 minutes of searching around to find one because I rarely use them anymore. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time I'd used one for a transfer between computers. I just send stuff through OneDrive/DropBox/GDrive or some other mechanism.

Today I'm wondering if the rest of you have abandoned using portable storage or if is it something you find useful. How often do you use portable storage in your life? Apart from laptops or mobile phones, I'm wondering about portable disk drives or any device where you transfer data using a wire rather than wirelessly. Note, I'm not talking about going from one computer to another on a wired network. I mean moving the storage from one place to another with your hands.

The only place I know I'm regularly using a portable drive is in the Tesla. There I have a rugged portable SSD that captures the dashcam and security footage. I had to transfer it from the drive to my computer last year when I saw an accident. I think that might have been the last time that I actually used portable storage (before the scan).

I have lots of old portable drives, and even old CD/DVDs I've recorded that have SQL Server ISO, pictures, backups of databases, and more. However, I don't use them anymore. I don't know how many of those devices still work, and I ought to check them, load the backups into cloud storage, and then recycle (after erasing) the devices. Or trashing them. I'm guessing many of them are just old tech at this point no one wants.

I think the era of using portable storage most of the time is likely gone. Even my friends who like to keep their own backups locally tend to use a NAS of some sort and wireless transfers, as opposed to plugging in. However, maybe I'm wrong. Are some of you still Luddites with storage technology, if that word can even apply to digital storage technology?