3. If you find a drive we’ve tested that costs less, go for it: WD’s Elements and Easystore drives are just as fast and reliable as the My Book. Anthony Karcz Senior Contributor. Best … The first two steps of choosing an external hard drive are setting your budget and determining what size you need. Samsung T5 SSD. You also get a two year warranty and 30 days of phone support thrown in for good measure. (Image credit: Samsung) Getting one of the best external hard drives is the perfect way to get more storage on a PC or laptop. The Seagate Backup Plus Slim is reliable, thin, and light, and it offers fast speeds at a reasonable cost. He carries things every day. As can often be important for gamers, this drive looks the part too. It features a rugged, metallic exterior, giving it an industrial aesthetic that many of the best external hard drives do not. What’s A Good Internet Speed For Your Growing Digital Needs? Why we like it: The Synology DiskStation DS220+ is the fastest NAS we tested, and it offers powerful hardware for around $300 (plus the cost of hard drives, around $250 for a pair of 4 TB drives or around $500 for a pair of 8 TB drives). Easy to set up and manage, this two-bay NAS features hardware encryption, media streaming, remote access, useful apps, and solid data protection. The Best External Hard Drives In 2020 For Mac Computers. Its My Passport line has been a standard for many years and many generations, and the latest is the most capable yet. Contributor Group. Who this is for: Network-attached storage is ideal for people who have large media libraries, because you can store your files in one place and stream them locally to other devices. Western Digital My Passport Ultra 4TB external hard drive. Hardware encryption is an option with every My Passport Ultra drive, giving you an additional layer of protection (though past usability concerns with WD's solution mean we'd encourage you to use a third-party alternative for longer term storage) and there's a three year warranty, so you can rest assured knowing your new drive should keep your data protected for years to come. Source: techradar. If you need a massive drive to store all your photos, videos and important documents, hard drives are much more economical. The Kingston DataTraveler comes with a five-year warranty, which is less than SanDisk’s lifetime warranty, but we still think this is plenty of time to find any issues with the drive. Best budget hard drive: Western Digital My Passport Ultra. 2. Internal hard drives live inside the computer’s case and use PCIe or SATA technologies, while external hard drives use HDMI or USB. The Seagate Backup Plus Slim is reliable, thin, and light, … Internal storage drives are getting bigger, cloud storage is getting cheaper, and USB drives are getting less common. on Amazon. Best external hard drives at a glance. Buying guide for best external hard drives. If you want a drive for immediate access, and plan to regularly back up to or restore from it, an SSD is a better bet. If you break the port, you won’t be able to access your data until you find a new enclosure. *At the time of publishing, the price was $96. How to choose an external hard drive. It also has its own digital password-secured, 256-bit AES hardware encryption and ships with a three year warranty. Forbes Personal Shopper. As an SSD, this drive is unique among its hard drive contemporaries in that it’s much more resistant to shock damage. Best external drives for backup, storage, and portability. The Lacie Rugged is the drive for you. Its aluminum enclosure gives it modest protection against knocks and drops, but don't test that often as the internals are delicate. Digital storage is changing. The Ultimate External Hard Drive Buying Guide . If you want to store a personal photo and video collection, 1-2TB should be more than enough for anyone. Seagate includes handy backup software, too. It comes with a three-year warranty. The ADATA SE800 external SSD is everything you want in a shirt-pocket solid-state drive: sleek, tough, affordable, and snappy. It was about as fast as its competition in all of our tests, it’s the least expensive drive we tested, and it has a longer warranty (three years) than the other contenders. Why we like it: Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book is very reliable—we found it had a 6 percent failure rate across nearly 400 reviews on Amazon—and it offers the best balance of speed and price. PNY Elite 480GB USB 3.0 Portable SSD ... As cheap as storage is per gigabyte in 2020, the classic trade-off of hard drive size versus … Whatever capacity you opt for, USB-A 3.0 support delivers decent transfer speeds, and it's compatible with both Windows and Mac PCS. Justin Krajeski is a staff writer reporting on everyday carry at Wirecutter. Who this is for: People who need to quickly move large amounts of data often—large media files like raw photos and video—from one computer to another, without relying on the Internet for convenience, speed, or privacy. The Best External Hard Drives for 2020 Laptop hard drive almost full? Why we like it: The 64GB Kingston DataTraveler Elite G2 combines a low cost with one of the most consistently fast speeds in a flash drive we’ve tested. Best wireless hard drive: Western Digital My … With 5TB of space you can store over 100 games on a single one of these drives, giving you more than enough space for your digital library—no longer will you have to ponder uninstalling the games you're not actively playing. Toughest: Adata SE800. It will make an excellent addition to your kit. Dozens of 2.5-inch drive enclosures can be found online for between $10-$25 (£15-25) that will let you drop in an old drive easily, and turn it into an external hard drive or … Flaws but not dealbreakers: Compared with hard drives, the Samsung T5 Portable SSD is extremely expensive. If you don't have a big budget but need big storage, WD is here to save the day again with its WD 2TB Elements portable hard drive. WD Elements 8TB Desktop External USB 3.0 Hard Drive — $144.99 (List Price $179.99) WD Elements 4TB Portable USB … I've been a freelance tech journalist for 15 years, covering everything from PC hardware, to hacking scandals, Bitcoin, and privacy law. There is a newer USB-C version, but at nearly $20 more, it's not as easy to recommend. The Slim has a two-year warranty that’s a year shorter than that of Western Digital’s drives, and we’ve read some complaints about Seagate’s customer service on Amazon, but we don’t think either of these issues are dealbreakers. © 2021 Forbes Media LLC. Best professional storage: Western Digital My Book Duo. Official figures give this drive a sequential read and write speed of 2,800MBps and 2,100MBps respectively. When you make a purchase through links on this page, we may earn a commission. Using one of the best external hard drives is just part of the process in protecting your most important data, but it's an important part. Because they perform so similarly, we recommend getting the cheapest desktop hard drive you can find from a trustworthy maker. Even tens of thousands of pictures and hundreds of videos are unlikely to go over 1TB, but that leaves plenty of room for future snaps you take on higher resolution cameras and phones. Best overall: Samsung T5. This gives the internals enough shock protection to prevent any hard drive damage from drops as high as 1.2m and makes it capable of resisting up to a ton of passive pressure, so don't be concerned with accidentally standing on it. It also includes AES-NI hardware encryption acceleration for added security, has upgradable RAM, and comes with flexible software that’s easy to understand and works with a wide variety of third-party apps, such as Plex, BitTorrent Sync, and GitLab. It also has a blinking activity light that indicates when data is being transferred—a neat feature that other flash drives tend to lack. After a new round of testing hard drives in 2020, we found that the 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim is still the best portable hard drive for most people. Best lightweight: SanDisk Extreme Pro. If you want to shave a couple more dollars off of the price, you can opt for the 250GB version, but on a dollar-per-gigabyte level, this is one of the best configurations. We tested seven top-of-the-line external drives, including options from SanDisk, Seagate, Samsung and more. The best external hard drives let you take your data on the go (or backup while you're out and about) without fear of your data being damaged or lost. It's essentially become shorthand for best external storage drive, because the price of the best external … Newegg Promo Codes | 15% Off In December 2020 | Forbes, The Best Home Printers In 2021 For Every Printing Need, The Best Air Purifiers: 13 Top-Rated Picks To Freshen Up Your Home, The Best Microwaves According To Rave Reviews, The Best Retinol Creams, Serums, And Lotions, And How To Use Them, The 15 Best Office Chairs To Upgrade Your WFH Space, The 8 Best Xbox One Gaming Headsets For Immersive Sound, 8 Of The Best Pepper Mills For Easy Seasoning, 9 Drugstore Primers Worthy Of A Place In Your Routine. The Best Home Exercise Bikes, From Peloton Alternatives To Desk Bikes, The 10 Best Blue Light Blocking Glasses For Tired Eyes. If you don't mind paying more, you can go up to 5TB for just over $100, which is far cheaper than other comparably sized drives too. You may opt-out by. G-Technology G-Drive Slim SSD USB 3.1. Table of Contents. Both standards allow for a maximum throughput of … But that doesn’t necessarily negate the need for a good external hard drive — in fact, sometimes they’re the best … Desktop-size and portable platter-based storage has never … Right now, that means the 4 TB Western Digital My Book. They're also very robust compared to hard drives, as they feature no moving parts, so can more easily resist drops and knocks. By Andy Hartup 11 December 2020. 5. 10 best external hard drives for keeping your data safe If you want to back-up your photos, or your Mac or PC is low on space, use one of these gadgets David Phelan … WD My Book Duo 4TB external hard drive. If you want a dependable external drive that has plenty of storage space for documents and photos and is easy to take on the go, get the 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. A 3-4TB drive is a good target while staying within a modest budget, but you can go up to 5TB if your library is particularly exhaustive. If you need more space than that, you'll have to look into multiple drives, or network attached storage instead, where the sky is the limit with how much space you can have. The T5 is about as expensive per gigabyte as other external SSDs, and it’s one of the lightest and most compact. Samsung T5 SSD external hard drive. 4. You could also use a NAS if you have too much data to store in Dropbox or Google Drive, or if you don’t trust your data to a cloud storage provider. ... An external USB hard drive is one of the quickest and most secure … Learn more. It's also physically diminutive, making it very easy to slip into a bag or pocket and take it with you for a little additional storage space on the go. Plus the T5 has an indicator light that lets you know when it’s connected. While you can get a slightly better dollar to terabyte ratio with bigger drives, none are as cheap as this one. They're compact, attractive and offer protection against the digital (and sometimes physical) world, making sure that the digital information that you hold most dear is always safe and secure. These are the best external hard drives - both HDDs and SSDs - right now. It's not fast, it's not exceedingly pretty, but it has a decent capacity at a very affordable price. Available in a variety of colors—including gold, black and rose pink—the Maxone Ultra Slim is an attractive option for those who don't need massive storage space, but would still like to keep their important data close at hand. If you’d like to learn how to reformat your external drive to work with your operating system of choice, check out our guide. You can use the DS220+ as a home backup device, a media streamer, a mail server, a website-hosting device, a BitTorrent box, or a video-surveillance recorder. Learn more in our full guide to the best flash drives. Links to the best external hard drives we listed in this external hard drive review video:1. A tethered cap would solve this issue easily. What's more, most external … Worried you might drop your external drive on something hard? October 27, 2020 USB 3.0 isn't particularly fast, but it's enough for the above average 130MBPs read speed of this drive. The best external hard drives, like the WD Black Game Drive, are a pretty good middle ground too, offering decent performance with massive capacity at a good price. Samsung T3 USB 3.1 SSD (500GB) Read PCWorld's review. External drives won't give you the best load times—and are flat out not recommended for Xbox Series X/S and PS5 consoles—but they are one of the most affordable ways to have a much larger local game library. Compared to other Thunderbolt external hard drives, the Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt has affordable pricing. Learn more in our full guide to the best desktop hard drives. The best external hard drive doesn't necessarily mean the same these days. It's not the fastest drive in the world and doesn't have the fastest connection standard, but it's quick enough for regular transfers. We’ve spent hundreds of hours researching and testing external drives to find the best options for any use and budget. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. And at … Who this is for: People who spend most of their time working in one place and want to keep their important documents and photos safe on a higher-capacity, faster, and more cost-effective hard drive. Opinions expressed by Forbes … Available in capacities from 1TB to 5TB, this version is one of the most cost effective of the bunch and it offers the best performance, for a winning combination. Flaws but not dealbreakers: All of the desktop drives we tested were good, and we found the speed differences between them to be small. The best external hard drives also let you take your data on the go without fear of your data being damaged or lost. Know that you'll have to pay considerably more for SSD speed though, so you’re getting a much smaller hard drive for the money. Check out our step-by-step guide to backing up your computer for an easy way to get started. *At the time of publishing, the price was $108. In some circumstances, this … External hard drives are rated by the speed of their interface. Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC external hard drive. Learn more in our full guide to the best portable hard drives. Western Digital, or WD, makes some of the most popular internal and external drives the world over. LaCie Rugged USB-C 5TB External Hard Drive Portable HDD – USB 3.0, Drop Shock Dust Rain Resistant Shuttle Drive, for Mac and PC Computer Desktop Workstation Laptop, 1 Month … Wireless hard drives … Here's our pick of the very best external hard drive choices for your PC or Mac backups After testing seven hard drives, we found that Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book is the best external desktop hard drive for most people. He’s very well versed in carrying. It has a metal casing with an excellent build quality but is not so overly bulky that it will end up blocking any other USB ports on your laptop. Who this is for: People who frequently move between locations and want a hard drive to back up important documents and photos from their laptop. See it. The reliable 4 TB My Book is even faster and cheaper than a portable hard drive, but its larger size and power adapter make it difficult to travel with, so it’s better for people who don’t move their computers much. Expanding your internal storage is something every console gamer has had to face at some point, whether you paid extra for the larger capacity system or not. Best external drive for PC backup in 2020 & 2021. by Lewie Procter. Wirecutter is reader-supported. The best external hard drives at a glance. The Samsung T5 Portable SSD is more reliable, faster, and smaller than an external hard drive, but it’s super expensive per GB. *At the time of publishing, the price was $65. All products and services featured are independently selected by Forbes Shopping contributors and editors. There are no moving parts in an SSD, so it can handle drops and bangs that even protected hard drives can't, and also holds up longer to normal wear and tear. As cheap as storage is per gigabyte in 2020, the classic trade-off of hard drive … While online backups require a constant internet connection and are restricted to your internet speed when backing up and restoring, a local backup on an external drive is fast and readily accessible. Learn more in our full guide to the best network-attached storage. This drive uses a micro-USB connector, which isn't the most forward thinking of ports, but it does support USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds, so can transfer at up to 5Gbps (or roughly 625MBps). Learn more in our full guide to the best portable solid-state drives. We’ve all been there: that moment your laptop or desktop computer tells you it’s running out of hard drive space. The model listed here tops out at a meager 500GB capacity (the 1TB and 2TB models are much more expensive), but if that's enough for what you want to carry around with you, this drive will give you near-immediate access to everything it stores. That's far more than its read speeds will allow, but at least you know the connector won't bottleneck your transfers. The Best External Hard Drives for Mac in 2020 The Best Wireless Hard Drives for 2020 Samsung Launches 970 Pro and Evo NVMe SSDs Western Digital Launches M.2 SSD for 4K Gaming WD Redesigns its Entire Line of Passport and My Book Hard Drives. It's just nowhere near as portable. SanDisk Extreme 900. Replace these physical cable technologies with wireless Bluetooth or WiFi, and you have a wireless hard drive. The Samsung supports faster, USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds with a Type-C port, and it includes AES 256-bit hardware encryption to protect your sensitive data. The Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB is one of the more compact non-SSD drives, making it the best external hard drive for those who are looking to save some space. Plus, 4 TB should be more than enough space for your future storage needs. Need to back up your photos and videos? But we also have recommendations if you want more storage space, if you want something more reliable or even faster, or if you need to regularly move large amounts of data from one computer to another with an external drive. The full enclosure even gives this drive an IP54 rating, making it well protected against dust and water splashes (though not 100% impermeable) from any angle. All modern drives will have USB 3.0 support or USB 3.1 Gen 1 support. The Maxone 320GB Ultra Slim is an attractive external hard drive with a very low price and a small capacity. © 2021 Wirecutter, Inc., A New York Times Company, The most convenient drive for backups: Portable hard drive, If you spend most of your time at one desk: Desktop hard drive, The best performance: Portable solid-state drive (SSD), If you have a large media library: Network-attached storage (NAS), If you frequently move data between computers: Flash drive, For large media libraries or multiple home computers, step-by-step guide to backing up your computer, The Best External Optical Drives for DVDs and Blu-rays. When was the last time you backed up all of your important documents and photos? The fastest, most consistent 64 GB drive we tested; it’s also reasonably priced and has a sturdy black metal casing and a five-year warranty. Who this is for: Photographers, creative professionals, and people who don’t mind spending a lot per gigabyte to get a compact 500 GB drive that’s between three and five-and-a-half times faster than portable hard drives or desktop hard drives. Give your files a safe home with our pick of the best external hard drives, rated for value, size and portability. 1. The Best External Hard Drive Deals This Week*. Its mini-USB connector is a little antiquated. Learn more. Get more storage for your PC, Mac, Xbox or PS4. All of them measure just a few inches in every dimension, so this drive is small enough to slip into a bag or pocket if you want to take it with you. … But if you’re willing to shell out the cash, you’re safe doing so because it doesn’t have any major flaws. He previously wrote about tech at Wirecutter. The reliable external hard drive comes with a USB 3.0 port, nonetheless, for using with non-Thunderbolt devices. Why we like it: The 500 GB Samsung T5 Portable SSD works reliably, and it was consistently faster than other portable SSDs in our tests. Flaws but not dealbreakers: The small cap that protects the USB plug is easy to lose, but USB-A connections are durable, so it’ll work fine without it. This drive won’t deliver monstrous performance, but it is big and fast enough to hold a considerable amount of movies and TV shows, or even a few game installs if you want to take your favorite game to your friend's house. Why we like it: The 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim is one of the lightest, thinnest hard drives we tested in our guide to the best portable hard drives, and it was consistently faster than the competition in our multi-file music and photo transfer tests. It'll take longer to copy files to and from the drive, but that's not so important for a longer-term backup solution. It’s also useful for backing up multiple computers to a single location. in Reviews. … Links to the best external hard drives we listed in this external hard drive review video:1. The Synology DiskStation DS220+ is our new top pick for network-attached storage. For anyone who still needs an optical drive, the Asus ZenDrive U9M is the best DVD-only option, and the LG BP60NB10 is the best choice for Blu-ray discs. No need to worry about getting caught in the rain with this external hard drive. Top Picks. More important, it’s reliable—the tried-and-true Slim has been one of our picks for four years, and has an acceptable 9 percent reported failure rate across nearly 2,701 user reviews on Amazon. A step-by-step guide to formatting your external hard drive, and what file systems are best for Windows File History and macOS Time Machine. Flaws but not dealbreakers: The Backup Plus Slim’s USB port wobbles when pressure is applied to the cable. 11 months ago. If you leave it plugged in, you can also take advantage of WD Backup for PC software, which automatically backs up your most important files and folders. It has the most straightforward software to navigate, which makes it a breeze to set up encryption or check for updates. The Samsung X5 is technically a portable SSD rather than a hard drive, but it's an external drive nonetheless, and with this particular hardware makeup, it is exceedingly fast; many orders of magnitude faster than every other drive on this list. LaCie Porsche Design Type-C Mobile hard drive 2TB. Need to take your data somewhere dangerous? If you want to store your favorite movie collection, or need to backup footage you take from professional grade cameras at super high resolutions, then the more storage space you can get, the better. Adata SD700 External SSD. It depends what your budget is and what you want to use it for. It features a single USB-C connector for power and data transfer, with support for USB 3.0 speeds. Flaws but not dealbreakers: A NAS is larger, bulkier, and pricier than other external drives we recommend, and it requires setup and management, as well as a dedicated Ethernet line. This is due to the external hard drive’s reliance on a traditional hard drive … That's faster than any SATA hard drives (internal or external) and rivals some of the fastest internal NVMe drives too. With a 4TB capacity at a great price, this tough little drive is packed inside a sturdy metal casing and surrounded by a rubber guard barrier to ward off the worst of drops and bangs. Today’s best external hard drive deals.

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