Which hard drive is best

Account Profile. Sign Out. Photo-Illustration: retailers. Tags: the strategist electronics computers and tablets video games recommended by experts More. Most Viewed Stories. My Honeymoon by Backpack through Montenegro. The Dr. More Stories. Beats reading stickers. Its 5Gbps USB 3 interface makes it very fast and compatible with everything. Seagate would like you to install its "Dashboard" software for Windows and Mac OS, yet the drive works perfectly fine on any OS without it.

It has no security or built-in encryption, but there are plenty of more expensive drives that provide that functionality. Want to know more? WD has designed its Elements drives with an attractive case that stands vertically.

This seemingly trivial fact not only saves desk space but also keeps the drive's internals cooler. Its top and bottom vent holes. In the guts of the WD Elements you will find a 3. When stacked vertically and with plenty of air gap around, the drives should last much longer than internal ones packed close to a hot CPU or stacked horizontally on top of one another.

The product is pre-formatted with NTFS making it ready to use with Windows computers , a handy gesture considering that if you attempt to do a a full-format -as opposed to a "quick format"- on a capacity as large as 12TB you might end up waiting all day for it to finish. Mac users, of course, can just plug and reformat the drive, after a little wait it will work as well.

As a desktop drive inside an external enclosure, the WD Elements are not USB-port powered drives, each comes with its own wall wart style power adapter about the size of the average cell phone charger -with a barrel connector. While 12 terabytes should be enough storage expansion to keep you happy for a long time and store plenty of backups, work files or entertainment, larger versions are available:, capacities start at 3TB and go up to four, six, eight, ten, 12, 14, 16 and up to a whopping 18TB.

If you take an enterprise hard drive and put it inside a durable aluminum case with a portable, stylish design you would get a great external hard drive. But if you added one USB-C port capable of working at 5 GBps and two Thunderbolt ports plus you pre-formatted the drive to be macOS ready, then you have the ultimate Mac external hard drive.

The 18TB version is the most impressive of a family of high capacity drives that start at 4TB. Its pair of Thunderbolt ports means you can hook six units to one another with a single cable going to a Mac or PC. The drive comes with an AC power adapter, but can function without it as well when powered via USB 3. Thick as a pair of books, it is small enough to to carry in a backpack without the AC adapter and the tangled mess of wires you get with other drives.

A Thunderbolt 3 cable is included and SanDisk also provides a generous 5-year warranty, making the case for choosing any other drive rather hard. With tiny moving parts, Hard disk drives HDDs are fragile. All your data can be inaccessible in a second just by a mishap. Most of the failures can be attributed to damaged disk surfaces caused by physical shocks; being hit, falling over or dropped. Sudden shocks, especially while in use, can cause the head to crash or damage the platter.

Just exposing it to the elements can ruin your data and your day. That's why if you use external drives while outdoors a regular external hard drive becomes a risky proposition. An IPrated device can withstand dust, dirt, and sand, and can be submerged up to 1.

Sounds good? The firm went above and beyond to protect HDD internals with a silicone casing, triple-layered construction and vibration sensing technology so it can withstand falls from 1. We reviewed the earlier models when they were more expensive and less attractive, here.

The firm provides this model in four colours which makes separating projects by color-coded drives a breeze, believe me you don't want labels in an outdoors environment. It's "wrap-around" system means the cable is always with the drive so it doesn't tangle or get in the way.

Super useful when taking the drive with you in a backpack. With an aluminum enclosure that ensures durability while providing great heat dissipation and a very portable size plus super fast speeds the aptly named Rocket leaves little reasons not to choose it. It is available in capacities of up to 16TB and with your choice of flash memory type. It supports the latest fastest standards like Thunderbolt plus you don't need to mess with ports as it's got only one: a USB-C connector in the back that automatically switches between TB3 and USB 3.

If however you connect it to a computer with a USB 3. The performance of flash based storage also depends on the kind of flash memory used: QLC flash memory is best suited to read-intensive workloads, while TLC flash memory is best suited to write-intensive workloads. Sabrent wisely offers this drive in both QLC and TLC versions, letting you decide based on your work and usage requirements.

It boasts an integrated temperature and health monitoring system that should prevent it from getting too hot. Something that worried owners of its "Nano" sibling. Water-resistant and shock-proof, the MiniStation Extreme NFC from Buffalo isn't indestructible, but it's a nice change from some of the dangerously flimsy external hard drives available.

The rugged chassis stores a 2. It won't survive being dropped out of a window, but it'll be fine being knocked off a table. The IP5X certification means it is almost dust-proof, and the IPX3 certification means it can handle a water spray at up to a degree angle. A key feature is its bit AES encryption with near-field communication NFC capability, allowing it to be unlocked with a simple touch of a smartphone.

Mode switching takes less than a minute and the drive must be reformatted after that. Read the full review: Buffalo MiniStation Extreme. Alternatively, you can always use a smaller SSD for files that you need to access or move around often, and then store the other data that you use less often on a higher capacity HDD. Right now, our top pick for best external hard drive is the Western Digital My Passport 4TB, which is a mechanical hard drive.

We think it offers creatives the perfect balance of speed, reliability, portability and price for both Mac and PC users. Yes, you can! If you don't mind getting a little hands-on, you can save money by buying an internal hard drive or SSD and a suitable enclosure and putting it together yourself; it'll take five minutes, tops. For less speed at a better price, seek out a SATA SSD and a compatible enclosure; it's also easy to find hard disks and enclosures for maximum storage at the lowest prices.

Note that you won't benefit from any useful automated backup software that you might get with a ready-made external drive, so of that matters to you then you'll either need to source your own or settle for one of the options above. It's also worth knowing that if an external drive fails on you, it's possible that the fault's in the enclosure rather than the drive.

So if your external drive dies, it's worth finding a cheap enclosure and swapping the drive into that to see if it comes back to life; it's worked for us before! Included in this guide: 1. Save on an 3D World subscription.

View Deal. Western Digital My Passport. Interface: USB 3. Transfer speed: Up to MB per second. Warranty: 3 years. Reasons to avoid - WD backup software is basic - Needs formatting for Mac. Specifications Capacity: 2TB. Interface: USB 2. Reasons to avoid - Not the fastest. Reasons to avoid - No security features. Transfer speed: MB per second.

Warranty: 2 years. Reasons to avoid - Lacks Thunderbolt. Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt. Interface: Thunderbolt, USB 3. Transfer speed: Up to 10 Gbps on Mac. Interface: Thunderbolt 3, USB 3. Warranty: 5 years. Reasons to avoid - Big and heavy. Specifications Capacity: 1TB.

Reasons to avoid - Design not for everyone. WD My Book Duo. Reasons to avoid - Needs reformatting for Mac. Reasons to avoid - Bright orange may not suit.