Again Up Your Entire Life With the Finest Exterior Exhausting Drives

Should you’re operating out of space for storing in your laptop computer or it is advisable again up your information and retailer that backlog of movies you are going to edit in the future (I’m, I swear), an exterior arduous drive can resolve your downside. The difficulty is, there are a whole lot of drive choices starting from dirt-cheap to crazy-expensive—which one is true in your wants? I’ve examined dozens, throughout working methods and with totally different use circumstances in thoughts, to seek out the very best exterior arduous drives for storage, backups, gaming, video modifying, network-attached storage (NAS) units, and extra.

Try our different guides, together with The way to Again Up and Transfer Your Pictures Between Providers, The way to Again Up Your Digital Life, and The way to Again Up Your iPhone.

Up to date September 2025: We have added the Seagate Extremely Compact SSD, LaCie’s new rugged SSD4 and the Corsair EX400U, and we topped the brand new Samsung 990 the very best inside SSD. We’ve additionally up to date costs and hyperlinks all through.

Desk of Contents

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Finest for Backups

{Photograph}: Western Digital

Western Digital

Parts Desktop Exhausting Drive

For incremental backups, which we advocate, pace is not an enormous issue. That is why the primary drive I like to recommend is that this Western Digital Parts arduous drive. I’ve been utilizing a variation of the Parts desktop arduous drive to make incremental backups of my information for greater than a decade. These drives are huge and require exterior energy, however they’re a few of the least expensive, most dependable drives I’ve used.

Switch speeds will not be off the charts—the Parts drive I examined scored 120 megabytes per second (MB/s) for sequential writes on Home windows—however once more, it is best to ideally be operating backups in a single day anyway, and even at these speeds the common PC backup shall be completed by morning. These drives use USB-C with assist for USB 3, and I’ve had no downside utilizing them with Home windows, macOS, and Linux.

Storage choices go all the way in which as much as 20 terabytes. Simply test the costs; typically you will get a 10- and even 12-TB drive for not way more than the 8-terabyte model. And I’ve not seen an enormous distinction between the Parts line, the WD My Ebook drives, or the WD My Passport drives. The My Passport drives command a premium worth as a result of they’re smaller, and the My Ebook drives have some encryption options that drive up the value, however I discover the essential Parts drive is ample for most individuals.

Different Nice Backup Drives

Seagate Enlargement 8-TB Exterior Exhausting Drive for $159: Seagate is one other dependable drive maker. It by no means hurts to have extra backups, and should you do need a number of backups, use drives from totally different manufacturers, since it can cut back the possibility that each fail concurrently.

Finest for Transportable Backups

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

Western Digital

My Passport Extremely

Should you journey rather a lot, you will need one thing that is simpler to hold than the Parts drives, which are not the very best in a suitcase. For backups when touring, I really like Western Digital’s My Passport sequence, particularly the brand new “Ultra” model, which makes use of a typical USB-C twine, eliminating the necessity to carry a separate cable. It isn’t the thinnest drive available on the market, nevertheless it’s lower than an inch thick and strong sufficient that I by no means nervous about tossing it in my bag. (Though it ought to be mentioned that it is a spinning drive, so do not actually toss it.) I additionally like that the corners are properly rounded and there are not any screws or the rest that may catch on cloth in your bag.

There are a selection of colours out there and you will get from 1 TB to six TB. I examined the 5-TB mannequin, however Western Digital claims the identical speeds no matter drive dimension. I examined it utilizing CrystalDiskMark on Home windows, AmorphousDiskMark on macOS, and KDiskMark on Linux and averaged the outcomes to provide you with 121 MB/s for learn pace and 115 MB/s write pace. It isn’t what you’d wish to copy images rapidly for a shopper within the discipline, however quick sufficient to run a each day backup in your resort room.

Different Transportable Backup Drives

Western Digital Parts 5-TB Transportable HDD for $130: This drive is barely thinner than our high decide, however feels flimsier in my expertise. Speeds are tad slower as effectively, however should you’re on a price range this may prevent a little bit money. Corsair is advertising and marketing this as a great way to backup your iPhone ProRes footage, and whereas it definitely works for that, efficiency is proscribed by the iPhone’s USB-C interface. For optimum throughput, join it to a PC with a USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 port.

The Thunderbolt 5 Drive: When Velocity Is Every thing

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

LaCie has up to date its rugged SSD line with the Rugged Pro5. This one ditches the enduring orange padding for blue, however it’s in any other case similar to the bizarre LaCie padded drives on the surface. On the within, that is an amazingly quick drive. The 5 within the title is for, you guessed it, Thunderbolt 5, which regardless of being introduced seemingly eternally in the past, has been painfully gradual to trickle onto the market. This made testing a bit tough, however fortuitously a good friend let me borrow his brand-new MacBook Professional 14 for testing. And the outcomes have been spectacular.

LaCie claims learn/write speeds of as much as 6,700 MB/s and 5,300 MB/s, which it says are sufficient for real-time modifying of 8K and 6K RAW footage. In testing the very best speeds, file transfers have been 5,787 MB/s learn and 5,188 MB/s write—which, whereas not fairly matching the declare, continues to be far and away the quickest drive on the web page. However uncooked speeds are simply numbers for spreadsheets; I used to be extra desirous about real-world efficiency. Since I occurred to even be testing the Nikon Z6III (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which may shoot 6K ProRes RAW, I loaded a superb little bit of footage on the Pro5 and was certainly capable of edit utilizing DaVinci Resolve Studio.

The draw back right here is the value. At $600 for the 4-TB model (which is the minimal you’d need for working with ProRes RAW video information), it is a very dear drive. It’s nonetheless, effectively definitely worth the cash if it is pace you are after.

Finest USB4 Drive

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

Should you do not but have any units with Thunderbolt 5 assist, this Thunderbolt 4 drive could be my suggestion for anybody obsessive about pace. Corsair’s EX400U is a formidable little drive, constantly delivering speeds of round 3,800 MB/s for sequential learn and and three,550 MB/s write. Once more, that is solely going to be potential you probably have a tool that helps USB4/Thunderbolt 4 (together with current Macbooks, Dell XPS, and others—see our information to the very best laptops for extra). Technically, simply as I used to be wrapping up this replace, Lacie’s new rugged SSD got here out which beat this drive in my assessments by about 10 MB/s, however this drive is smaller, lighter, and cheaper.

I additionally like that Corsair has included a Magsafe connector on the again of the case, which makes nice possibility for backing up ProRes video footage out of your iPhone.

Finest Finances Transportable SSD

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

These Essential drives are my favourite general-purpose exterior storage drives. They’re moderately priced (for a transportable SSD) and speedy sufficient for many makes use of. The X6 is light-weight and tiny, making it a good selection for working on the espresso store.

This is not a blinding-fast arduous disk. In reality, beneath the hood, the X6 makes use of an older drive interface (Serial AT Attachment, or SATA), which was extra frequent with spinning arduous drives. So whereas it is small and light-weight, its pace is proscribed by that older interface know-how. In my testing on Home windows and macOS, that works out to about 550 MB/s learn pace and 208 MB/s write pace. That is ok for backup and use as an exterior drive, however I do not advocate it for Xbox or PlayStation use. It does work positive with the iPad Professional although.