External hard drives are used to backup large amounts of information outside of your Mac’s internal hard drive. Anyone who’s ever lost all of their data after a computer crash can understand how important that is. Best Cheap Hard Drive For Mac Seagate Backup Plus SLIM. If you are looking for MAC external hard drive that is portable and very light in weight, Backup Plus Slim is among the best. It comes in 9.6 mm thickness and weighs about 150 gm. Best external backup drives for mac What makes these the best picks? Customers said these are the best for mac.
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.
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).
Carbonite starts at $71.99 per year for a single computer, but if you want to back up external drives and back up videos automatically, that jumps to $111.99. That makes it expensive compared to. The external drive has been tested rigorously, after which numerous review outlets have given it their seal of approval, making it one of the best external hard drives out there for your Mac. Taking its price into account, the external hard drive will meet and exceed your expectations.
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. (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.
![Best portable external backup drive for mac Best portable external backup drive for mac](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126015398/777916535.jpg)
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 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.
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.
When you purchased your computer, you thought it had plenty of space. Or at least, it seemed like it did… until photos, videos, programs, documents, and other files began crowding the disk space.
Whether desktop or laptop, 10 years old or only 2, running out of storage on your Mac or PC is a widespread problem with an easy solution.
For a lot of people, the go-to is cloud storage services such as iCloud or Google Drive, but these aren’t a great fit for everyone, especially if you have a lot of files or need to access them offline on both your mac and PC.
In this case, an external drive that’s Mac and PC interchangeable is the best option, because you’ll have all your files on hand at all times and it can store significantly more data than a cloud drive.
In this article, we’ll help you better understand the use cases of a physical drive, and round up the best Mac & PC compatible Best wall papers for mac air. external drives for backup and storage purposes.
Quick Summary
Tired of learning all the “techy” terms related to hard drives? We understand. Here’s a brief of our recommendations to save you time exploring.
For Mac users: G-Technology Portable External Hard Drive 2TB
From the sleek design to the pre-formatting, this terabyte-sized drive is perfect for Mac users who need a little extra space and offers the transfer rate up to 140MB/s for accessing all your files.
For Windows PC users: WD 2TB Elements Portable
At 5400 RPM but only around 3″ x 4″, this tiny drive packs a real punch. You can get it in sizes from 1 to 4 TB, all of which are equally portable and will allow you to access your files with speed and efficiency wherever you go.
For the best of both worlds: Samsung T5 Portable SSD
Whether you simply prefer the speed of an SSD or use both Mac and PC on a regular basis, this drive offers formatting that works everywhere you go and top notch read/write rates. The drive is small, portable, and sleek (available in multiple colors!)
Who Should Get This?
You don’t have to be a power user to make use of an external drive, but if you aren’t sure you need one, here are some considerations:
- Has your computer slowed down due to being stuffed with files you aren’t necessarily using all the time?
- Do you need to backup your computer, especially if you’re worried about a crash soon due to the age of the machine?
- Are the fees for your cloud storage service not worth the amount of storage you get?
- Do you want to clean up old files that you only occasionally reference?
- Need a better place to run large applications from, or have programs you want to run on more than one computer?
If you’re saying yes to any of these, then there’s a good chance you would benefit from an external drive. It’ll give you space and security that you need.
However, an external drive might not be the best choice for you if you only have a few files that need storage, or if you already have a backup of your computer for example via backup software. In that case, using a small flash drive or an online cloud storage provider might be the better option.
External Drive for Mac and PC Compatible: What to Look for?
File Capacity
The number one consideration when buying an external drive is how much space it has to offer. Depending on what type of files you’ll be storing and how long you want the drive to last, you may want more or less space. However, when buying an external drive you should be getting at minimum 128GB, as anything less will be better served by a flash drive. Many people will be much more satisfied with closer to 1 TB of storage though since space tends to disappear faster than you would think.
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Type: HDD and SSD
External drives come in two types: HDD and SSD. The former is what is normally referred to as a “hard drive”, since it uses a physical spinning disk to read and write data, while the latter, sometimes called a solid-state drive, actually uses flash memory and stores everything electronically and has no moving parts. An HDD tends to be cheaper, but SSDs are faster and more reliable.
Formatting
An external drive is typically formatted for either MacOS or PC use. While there are some drives that work on both, most tend need to be reformatted to be functional on the opposite system, and that will erase all your data. Formatting in the first place can also be difficult, so look for a drive that’s already formatted to work with your computer and know that you will only be able to access your files on machines of the same type.
Speed
All external drives are rated for read-and-write speeds, which is how fast they can store, retrieve, and display information. Higher speeds are better, but a small difference won’t be noticeable. An HDD is generally not capable of the higher speeds of an SSD, but they do tend to be much cheaper.
Best External Drive for Mac and PC Interchangeable: Our Picks in 2019
Best External Backup Storage For Mac
1. G-Technology Portable External Hard Drive 2TB
Using a Mac? This drive is preformatted just for you, offering a high transfer rate for fast file access and connects easily via USB-C. It will definitely stand up to regular use of creative editing applications and store files/backups well if you’re using in a more long-term frame.
Pros:
- 2TB is a fair amount of storage space for any user, and this drive is available in larger sizes as well.
- The transfer rates up to 140 MB/s means you can easily access your files without sacrificing any time spent loading or waiting for files to transfer.
Cons:
- Pre-formatted for Mac, but can be reformatted to Windows.
- Not cross-compatible.
2. WD 2TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive
If you’re an avid PC user, this HDD drive from Western Digital has you covered. With sizes from 1 to 4 TB and plug-n-play functionality, you’ll start with your feet on the ground. USB 3.0 allows you to transfer files at up to 5MB/s, and the drive overall runs at 5400 RPM.
Pros:
- A high RPM means you don’t have to worry about sitting in front of your computer waiting for files to load, while the slim 3″ by 4″ design is super portable, perfect for taking files to and from work or another setting.
- Can even be used to backup games on your console.
Cons:
- Only for PC, unless you want to separately reformat to use with Mac.
3. Samsung T5 Portable SSD
Available from the smallest 250 GB size all the way up to 2TB, this external SSD from Samsung writes at 540MB/s, which is a stellar rate. It normally uses a USB-C cable, but if your computer doesn’t yet support this, a standard USB-A cable is also provided. This product also ranks in our best portable SSD drive review.
Pros:
- Formatted to work on Mac and Windows and even Android!
- A variety of storage options makes it easy to find the right size for you.
- The sleek drive is also very sturdy and fits into the palm of your hand.
Cons:
- Transfer speeds may be slightly lower if you can’t make use of the included USB-C cable.
Useful Tips
Don’t forget to get an external drive case (like this one from Amazon), which will help protect your drive from potential damage caused by accidental scratch or dropping. It also allows you easily pack it into backpack or briefcase.
Want to format your external drive for Mac and PC compatibility? Check out this step-by-step tutorial we created earlier.
Want to format your external drive for Mac and PC compatibility? Check out this step-by-step tutorial we created earlier.
To extend the life of your storage drive, it’s a good practice to always put it on a flat and stable surface and away from heaters, humidifiers or air conditioners. Also, when you’re done with data backup or file transfer, make sure to properly eject the drive before plugging it out.
Still can’t decide between an HDD or SSD external drive? Check out this guide from PC World, which will help outline which is best depending on your situation. Alternatively, if you aren’t sure about getting an external hard drive at all, you can always try out a web-based cloud service first to see if it gives you space and flexibility you want.
Best External Backup Drive For Mac And Pc
Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox are great places to get started since they offer free options at the lowest tier, and paid users can get more than 1TB of storage space.
Final Words
External Hard Drive
Whether you prefer HDD or SSD, you’re looking for your first drive or your third, an external drive is usually a great solution for data backup and file storage on both your Mac and PC. Moving files off your computer will also help tune up your PC a little bit and will protect your important files from potential damage.
Are you using both a Mac and PC, and how much space do you need for your external drive? Leave us a comment below and tell us how you’re making the most of your external drive!
Influenced by the startup culture in the Silicon Valley, Jessica loves building things from zero to one and is keen on following news related to the Big Five tech giants and many SaaS startups.