Speedy hardware is all well and good, but you also need somewhere to keep all your digital stuff. For almost all ultraportables now, this means a solid-state drive (SSD). These compact, flash-based storage devices are weight savers and immune to data loss from shock or bumps because they don't have any moving parts, which is ideal for systems doing a lot of traveling. Increasingly, SSDs use a form factor called M.2, which is smaller than your traditional 2.5-inch SATA drive—and smaller connectors allow smaller designs, which makes them a perfect fit for an ultraportable. Now, most such M.2-connected drives use a PCI Express (PCIe) bus connection for faster data transfer, and thus faster overall performance. Some very thin ultraportable designs bypass M.2 implementations altogether, though, and solder the storage directly to the motherboard for even greater space efficiencies. (You can't upgrade those. What you buy is what you're stuck with.) A 256GB capacity for SSD storage is very common on midrange and high-end ultraportables. It would be nice to have a bit more room than that, but boosting SSD capacity still tends to be pricey, so the cost can jump if you opt for a larger 512GB or 1TB option if the manufacturer offers it. A 256GB drive will do the job for many users, though, especially since you likely won't be storing large game installations or media projects on this type of computer. While SSDs are the most common storage format for ultraportables, you will see two other storage options used on less-expensive systems. Some low-cost ultralight laptops use an embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC), a form of solid-state storage sometimes (mis)identified as an SSD in product specs but actually flash memory like the kind used on memory cards. As such, it's slower and a lot smaller in capacity (32GB to 128GB) than a standard SSD. You'll generally find this type of storage only on the very cheapest Windows laptops and in many Chromebooks. Finally, a (very) few budget-minded systems still use good, old-fashioned spinning hard drives, though the presence of one as the boot drive signals an older or remaindered model at this point. These drives are less expensive than SSDs, and they offer substantially more room for your files for the money—you will often see hard drives with capacities of 500GB or more. You won't get the same speedy performance as you do with an SSD, but lots of storage space is a plus. Given ever-thinner designs, however, most makers of ultraportables have phased out bulky hard drives altogether at this point.