Anyone who uses a PC should have an external drive. It’s not only a useful means of data backup and storage, it also allows you to transport files from your desktop or laptop to another device.
Shop for Mac external hard drives at Best Buy. Compare and read customer reviews to purchase the Apple hard drive that fits your needs. 9 Seagate Backup Plus Hub External Hard Drive from $99 (4 TB) BUY NOW The Seagate Backup Plus Hub is an excellent option for desktop users with its own power supply, as well as a duo of USB 3.0 ports for connecting and charging devices.
Xbox One X users, as well, would be wise to invest in an external drive as a way of augmenting the console’s measly 1TB hard drive (the external drive needs to be USB 3.0-compatible and will be formatted when you insert the drive).
The best external drives 2019
- WD My Passport 4TB: Best external backup drive [amazon.com]
- Samsung T5 SSD: Best external performance drive [amazon.com]
- Samsung Portable SSD X5: Best portable Thunderbolt 3 drive [samsung.com]
The question is, which external drive is right for you? To answer that, we’ve combed through our reviews of both external hard disks and SSDs to pick the top drives we’ve tested. We’ll also walk you through what you need to know to buy the best external drive for your needs.
Updated March 27, 2019 to add two reviews that put style on an equal footing with performance.
- The G-Technology G-Drive mobile USB-C external drive (available on Amazon) performs well, and G-Technology always delivers attractive designs that seem intended to harmonize with Apple products. Alas, along with the Apple design cues, comes an relatively Apple-like price. Read our full review.
- The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch (available on Amazon) is a svelte drive that sports an attractive basket-weave polyester fabric, as well as good benchmark results. The price is pretty affordable, too. Read our full review.
Best external backup drive
Lots of storage for less than the competition, attractive styling, and good performance with small files highlight this USB 3.0 portable hard drive. An excellent bargain.
Our pick for best portable external backup drive for 2017 is Western Digital’s My Passport 4TB drive. Although it’s a tick or two slower than other backup drives (like our runner-up, for example) in sequential file writing (think copying movie files), it does better at writing small files (think hundreds of Word or Excel documents.) It’s not flashy or super-fast, but for most people who only whip it out once a month to run backups and then shove it back into a drawer, those things don’t matter as much as the capacity, price, and reasonable performance. (Read our full review.)
Runner-up
If capacity and portability are your primary concerns, and the Backup Plus Portable fits up to 5TB in pretty much a standard 2.5-inch USB external package. It's fast with large files, but on the slow side with small ones. Regardless, it's a worthy drive that gives you more space for your movies and games.
Our runner-up for this popular category is Seagate’s slightly larger and somewhat faster Backup Plus Portable. Like the WD above, it’s a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps) drive. It tops out at 5TB in a single drive and can also be had in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. There’s even a “fast” 4TB version that uses two hard drives in RAID for more performance.
In our tests of the 4TB version, we found the Seagate to be slightly faster with large file transfers (think movies) but worse with small file transfers (think Office documents). It’s still a worthy runner-up, though. Best hub for mac laptop. (Read our full review.)
Best performance USB drive
The T5 is easily the fastest non-RAID portable USB SSD we've tested. It makes full use of its Gen 2, 3.1 interface while retaining the svelte profile of the T3. A winner for sure.
Remember that scene in Office Space where Peter Gibbons is desperately trying to save files to disk before getting out of the office? Yeah, mmkay. If you need ultra-fast performance in a package that you can put in your pocket, look no further than Samsung’s new T5 . Not much larger than a book of matches, the T5 comes in sizes from 500GB to 2TB. The best part is its speed. The drive features a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) over USB Type C.
And no, unlike most USB “thumb drives” this baby doesn’t hit the wall when writing files. It can write 20GB of files in just 110 seconds. If it’s a single large file, it’ll write it in 58 seconds. (Read our full review.)
The Extreme Portable SSD's convenient form factor trumps the drive's slight performance deficit compared to the Samsung T5. With its fast USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) capability, this is currently our favorite portable SSD.
Runner-up
The new drive here is the runner-up, which some may consider an even better pick than the Samsung T5: The Sandisk Extreme Portable. You can read our review of it here, where we give it 4.5 stars and an Editor’s Choice Award. It’s a seriously fast USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) drive, just not quite as fast as the Samsung T5.
You might still choose it instead of the Samsung T5 because it’s more comfortable with its rubberized grip finish. It comes with a nifty combo cable that adapts to old-school square USB Type A and also works with USB-C ports.
The Sandisk Extreme Portable displaces the Sandisk Extreme 900 drive, but we think it’s a fair decision because the Extreme 900 is, well, pricey. At $700 for 1.92TB, it’s hard to justify over the Extreme Portable’s $521 for 2TB.
Best portable Thunderbolt 3 drive
Portable Thunderbolt 3 drives have been long overdue, but we’re happy to recommend Samsung’s new Portable SSD X5 drive. The full review is on our sister site Macworld, but let’s just say it’s stupidly fast and kinda like putting a scorching Samsung 970 Pro in an enclosure that fits in your pocket and not giving up much performance at all.
Notice that we don’t say “best portable performance Thunderbolt 3 drive,” because by very definition, a Thunderbolt 3 drive should be blazingly fast. The only reason we’re not universally recommending the Portable SSD X5 is the relative rarity of Thunderbolt 3 ports on PCs. You’d need to be driving a brand-new Dell XPS 13 or HP Spectre x360 13 to be able to use Thunderbolt 3.
What you need to know before you buy
Capacity and price
External-drive shopping can pull you deep into specs and features, but the most important two numbers for consumers are capacity and price. Many assume the lowest-cost drive gets you the most value, but it often doesn’t. In fact, dollar for dollar, it’s often the worst deal.
For example, we took the WD Black My Passport portable drive and compared the prices of the 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB drive, on capacity and price. Keep in mind, this is one drive on one day (July 11, 2017), and just one vendor, Amazon, but it illustrates the point.
If you look at the chart above, you can see the worst deal is that $58 1TB HDD, while the 4TB nets the most storage capacity for the money. Here are the same numbers in a bar chart form:
So yes, if you’re buying an external drive, you pay more for the lowest capacity. However, this doesn’t mean you should automatically shell out for that 4TB drive. In the end, it still costs more. If you really don’t need the storage capacity of a 4TB drive, put that extra $57 toward something you actually do need.
Interface
The vast majority of drives today are USB drives. From there it gets confusing. Today, the flavors include: USB 3.0, USB SuperSpeed, USB 3.1 Gen 1 (which is basically USB 3.0), and USB 3.1 Gen 2.
For the most part, it doesn’t matter which of these versions you get (beware the much older USB 2.0, though). USB 3.0 allows transfer speeds up to 5Gbps, as does USB 3.1 Gen 1. USB 3.1 Gen 2 is the fastest USB version and can move data up to 10Gbps. No single hard drive today can surpass the throughput of USB 3.1 Gen 1, though. The sleight of hand to watch for is if a drive vendor lists “USB 3.1” in the specs without specifying Gen 1 or Gen 2.
The only place Gen 2 can help is with an SSD. The good news is that while USB 3.1 Gen 2 used to be only in crazy expensive SSD external drives, it’s fairly affordable today. A Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD that is our runner up for portable storage can be had for $125 in a 500GB capacity.
Ports
External drives come with a variety of confusing and esoteric ports. Here’s what you need to care about.
USB 3.0 Micro B port is the most common port on portable backup drives today. It’s basically the same Micro USB port used on your phone, but beefed up with more connectors to hit USB 3.0 speeds. It’ll hit 5Gbps and for everything but the fastest portable SSDs is still fine.
USB 3.0 Type B Best web browser for mac. port is the larger, blocky version of USB 3.0 Micro B. USB 3.0 Type B is often used in larger external drive enclosures. As its name implies, it’ll hit USB 3.0 speeds at up to 5Gbps.
USB Type C is the newest of the USB connectors and features a nifty reversible design that’s being used on phones, tablets, and PCs. Its most important feature is that it supports up to 10Gbps transfer speeds. The key phrase here is “up to.” USB Type C is just the connector and port on the drive (or phone), but the rules allow USB Type C to support transfer speeds from USB 2.0’s 480Mbps to USB 3.0’s 5Gbps and USB 3.1’s 10Gbps. So don’t caught up thinking that because a drive you buy has this nifty new interface and port, you’ll get awesome speeds. And no, hooking up a hard drive to a USB Type C port doesn’t make anything faster.
Outside the theoretical speed advantage of USB Type C is a power advantage. A standard USB Type C port on your desktop or laptop should be able to support a minimum of 15 watts, so you should be able to run larger, more power-hungry drives.
Thunderbolt 3 was designed as one cable to rule them all, and it’s rapidly looking like it will. The port basically adopts a USB Type C port and connector but also offers the ability to run pure PCIe at up to 40Gbps. For the performance-minded, Thunderbolt 3 is the natural alternative. One negative, though: It ain’t cheap. Our recommended portable, the Samsung Portable SSD X5 is $697 for 1TB of capacity. A 1TB Samsung T5 on USB is only $278.
There’s no reason to pay extra for a Thunderbolt 3 drive unless it’s high-performance. A Thunderbolt 3 portable hard drive would be a complete waste of time and money for most people.
Thunderbolt 2 is, at this point, a dying port. Using a miniDisplayPort connector, it only really gained popularity on Macintosh PCs and is now being put out to pasture. Unless you have an older Mac, there’s really no need to invest in a pricier Thunderbolt 2 drive or port today unless it’s for legacy support issues.
eSATA is another mostly dead port. Made as an extension of SATA, eSATA was a cheap way to get beyond the 60MBps performance of USB 2.0. USB 3.0 put the last nail in its coffin, though, so you can ignore this port today. Like Thunderbolt 2, the only reason to invest in an eSATA drive is for use with older computers.
Apr 16, 2018 Yet Another Second Life Viewer! For developers: how to apply to list a viewer in this directory Your Second Life accounts must be in good standing, must not be suspended, and must not have been permanently banned or terminated. https://intrepexam.tistory.com/8. A clean install is also the best way to avoid many potential issues the first time. SL-Only Viewer Full-function viewer for normal SL use, including mesh uploading. Aug 15, 2013 I use an iMac with a 25' screen and a Macbook pro for SL. Im currently running Phoenix as my viewer. Any other Mac users out there who recommend a different viewer? What about settings? I appreciate any suggestions. Seems like my loading and grapics arent working like they used to and thinking my settings may need to be adjusted.
Buy two?
There’s an old saying that “one is none and two is one.” You can apply that phrase to space capsule oxygen tanks, plane engines, or whatever mission critical system you depend on, including hard drives.
The philosophy on external drives used for backup is that copying 10 years’ worth of photos onto an external drive and then erasing it on your PC’s local drive isn’t actually a backup at all. If that drive gets chewed up by the dog or otherwise dies, you’ve lost it all.
If you’re paranoid about backups, consider getting two backup drives, possibly in different colors, and then alternating complete backups of your PC to the drives every few month. This should mitigate data loss should a drive die. Truly paranoid people will even take the second drive to work so there’s no chance of losing both drives to the same local disaster.
How we tested
We use our standard storage test bed to evaluate the performance of the drives we review. It’s an Intel six-core Core i7-5820K on an Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard with a Thunderbolt 3 card and 32GB of RAM running Windows 8.1. We use various synthetic benchmarks including Crystal Disk Mark 5, AS SSD, and Iometer. We also use a manual file-copy test where 20GB of small files and another 20GB single file are written to and read from the storage drive. The test bed boots to a plain SATA drive, but all targets and sources for drive performance use a 24GB RAM disk.
We also use an Asus Thunder EX3 discrete Thunderbolt 3 card and Asus USB 3.1 10Gbps card for testing. The Asus card uses an Asmedia 1142 controller.
Our external drive reviews
If you’d like to learn more about our top picks as well as other options, you can find links below to all the external drives we’ve reviewed. We’ll keep evaluating new ones on a regular basis, so be sure to check back to see what other drives we’ve put through their paces.
Best Backup Hard Drive Software
When it comes to data storage, enough space is never a possible word. Fortunately, thanks to the constant changes in technology, users are empowered with storage options that were unthinkable a few years ago.
Best External Hard Drives for Mac:
1. LaCie Rugged Mini
This best hard drive for Mac is available in two different sizes, namely 2TB and 4TB. The device is easily identifiable by its distinctive orange rubber sleeve. In addition, it has been purposely designed to stand the most difficult environmental conditions.
Price:
2TB: $109.94
The Rugged Mini is rain, drop, and crush resistant, compact in size, and has a 2 year warranty. It is tested to resist a drop of 1.2m, and a crush of a 1tn car. Besides, its compact size makes it very easy to transport.
In brief, the Rugged Mini presents a great alternative for those making films, photo shoots or other activities in tough places.
2. Maxtor M3 Portable External Hard Drive
Although the brand is presently owned by Seagate, the M3 still is presented under the Maxtor umbrella. This external hard drive is provided with a 3-year guarantee. Presented in a handy portable form, it is designed to store up to 4TB of data and supports Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later. https://intrepexam.tistory.com/4.
Price:
2TB: $64.99; 4TB: $99.99
The device is supplied with the software, including AutoBackup for drive backups, Secure Drive for drive security, and SecretZone for data encryption.
The M3 is ideal for environmental challenges, as it works with temperatures ranging from 5° to 40°C, and can be stored in places under temperatures ranging from –20° to 65°C. The device speed is 5.0GB/s using a USB 3.0.
Its size varies according to capacity, measuring:
82mm W x 118.2mm L x 19.85mm H (max) for 4TB and 3TB
82mm W x 112mm L x 17.5mm H (max) for 2TB, 1TB, and 500GB.
The weights are: 236g for 4TB and 3TB; 169g for 2TB; 151g for 1TB; 141g for 500GB.
Overall, this best portable hard drive for Mac is a very good alternative for those working under hard conditions.
3. WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo
This nice hard drive is available in 4TB and 6TB capacity, with a 30 days money back guarantee. In addition, it can be easily upgraded by the owner, by opening the case and replacing the existing drive. No screwdriver is needed for the operation.
Price:
4TB: $249.99; 6TB: $279.99
The Thunderbolt Duo is based on a bi-directional technology that permits fast multitasking. Thus, showing a video, doing a 3D rendering, and other graphic-intensive tasks at the same time present no problem to the user.
Features:
This best external hard drive for Mac includes the WD Drive Utilities, which enable the user to register the drive, run some tests, manage RAID or JBOD modes, and other tasks.
It is a very connectable drive, which is provided with two channels of up to 10Gb/s transfer rate, in both directions.
Formatted for Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Lion operating systems, the Thunderbolt Duo requires a computer with a Thunderbolt connector and supported by a Mac OS version 10.6.8 or higher. The device includes an AC adapter and a quick install guide.
Measuring 99 x 157 x 165 mm, and weighing 2.3 kg, the Thunderbolt Duo works with Time Machine for automatic backups.
It is a secure drive, provided with password protection and encryption capacities.
Overall, the Thunderbolt Duo is the best hard drive for Mac, which combines good storage capacity and great technology.
4. Apple AirPort Time Capsule
Apple’s Time Capsule is available in 2TB and 3TB sizes. It is actually more than a simple hard drive, as it has the capacities of both a wireless router and a network attached storage (NAS) device.
This best hard drive for Mac was introduced at the Macworld Conference and Expo on January 15th, 2008, and its fifth generation was released in June 2013, together with the sixth generation AirPort Extreme. For this last release, the name was changed to Airport Time Capsule.
Although it is more expensive than other more common hard drives, the Time Capsule has the advantage of working with Time Machine on Mac OS X and being automatically detectable by the Mac.
Measuring 168 x 98 x 98 mm, and weighing 1.48 kg, this device is not so good regarding connectivity as it includes four Gigabit Ethernet ports and only one 2.0 USB port.
Summarizing, although it is difficult to define what is the best external hard drive for Mac, Apple’s Airport Time Capsule is a valid option for Mac lovers.
5. Seagate Seven
Claiming to be the smallest 500GB external hard drive in the world, the Seagate Seven is a precision crafted device. It comes in a very elegant, but rugged stainless steel case.
It is indeed small in size, measuring only 7 x 82 x 123 mm, and weighing a mere 173g. It’s very slim format allows for great portability.
Its physical portability is enhanced by the fact that it is formatted for exFAT and thus can be used for Windows and Macs interchangeably.
The Seagate Seven includes the Seagate’s Dashboard Software, which can be used to backup photos and upload them later in social networks, such as Facebook. It also contains a high quality branded USB 3.0 to micro USB-B cable and an informational quick start guide. This device comes with a three-year guarantee.
On the downside, it is perhaps a bit expensive, and not very fast for an SSD drive.
Backup Hard Drive External Mac
Summarizing, the Seagate Seven is perhaps the best portable hard drive for Mac, when it comes to size. However, because its performance is not so good, it is more of the best buy external hard drive Mac based on looks than on efficiency.