Not buying a new iPhone? This flash drive will give your old one a new lease of life

Apart from a worn battery and broken display, a common reason people upgrade an iPhone is that there is no more storage space. And, more often than not, what’s behind all that storage consumption will be photos.

But just mass-deleting photos is a bad road to go down because you’re invariably going to lose sentimental photos and either be sad or get into trouble. On the flip side, sorting through photos can be a huge waste of time (although there is some excellent software that can help you sort the wheat from the chaff). 

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So, if you don’t want to delete things and you don’t want to be tied to paying iCloud storage fees, a great option is to back up photos to a flash drive that will connect to both your iPhone and a computer.

Enter the PNY Duo Link Lightning and USB-A flash drive. 

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PNY Duo Link

Bridge the gap between mobile and desktop with the PNY Duo Link storage drive, the perfect solution for on-the-go file management. 

Specs PNY Duo Link specs

• Capacity: 64-256GB
• Interface 1: Lightning Connector
• Interface 2: USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
• Compatibility: USB 3.2 Gen 1/USB 3.0 equipped host devices, backward compatible with USB 2.0
• Device Compatibility: iOS devices and a USB 3.2 Type-A connector for PC and Mac systems
• Operating System Compatibility: Compatible with iOS 10 and later, MacOS 10 and later, and Windows 7 and later
• Operating Temperature: 5 to 35 degrees Celsius 
• Storage Temperature: -20 to 60 degrees Celsius 

There are a lot of drives like this out there, but not many come close to the quality of this one. PNY is a respected company in the storage, memory, graphic card, and motherboard business, so you know you’re in good hands.

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The drive is solidly made, featuring a durable metal construction with laser-engraved markings (a great touch because stickers and ink wear off easily). This is more than robust enough to put up with day-to-day use and life on a keychain.

A plastic cap that covers the Lighting connector clips securely over the connector. This is the sort of thing that I will almost certainly lose, and when I do, I’m not going to worry about it. Lightning connectors are surprisingly robust.

It’s a nice touch that the Lightning connector is long enough to be used when the iPhone is in a thick case. I hate having to take my iPhone out of its case to use accessories, so it’s a pleasant surprise to find something that’s been designed with this in mind. 

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To use this drive on the iPhone, you need the PNY Duo Link 4 app. This handles the interface between the drive and the iPhone. Using this app, you can move selected photos and videos, back up your entire library, and even transfer documents and other media.

You can also use the app to password-protect the drive, but if you do this, you won’t be able to use the drive on a Windows or Mac system.

The reviews for this software aren’t great, but I’ve tested it with the drive on a number of iPhones and had no problem whatsoever, so I can’t comment on what problems people are having. 

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Performance-wise, the drive isn’t a speed demon, and I was getting approximately 60MB per second in tests. But since this is specifically for backing up the iPhone, I don’t see this performance limitation as an issue.

With prices starting at $25 for a 64GB drive and increasing to $55 for the 256GB version, this is a cheap and effective way to get beyond your iPhone storage issues. It’s not as perfect a solution as having the photos on your iPhone, but it’s a very cost-effective way to get a few years out of your iPhone while saving you hundreds of dollars.