The 8 Best External Hard Drives
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Our top external hard drive is the WD My Passport. Eight portable and desktop drives compared on capacity, cost per terabyte, warranty and encryption. When users buy our independently chosen editorial selections, we may earn commissions to help fund the Wiki.
An external hard drive is a spinning-disk drive in a case that plugs into a USB port. People use one to back up a computer, store photos and video, or add space to a game console. Pocket-size models run on USB power, while desktop models need an outlet. They differ in capacity, toughness, encryption and warranty.
Editor's Notes
October 16, 2026, by Ezvid Wiki Admin:
This list was last ranked in 2021, and a lot has changed. The Seagate Backup Plus Hub and the hard-drive version of the WD My Passport Wireless are gone, the G-Technology G-Drive now carries the SanDisk Professional name, and the LaCie 2big is really a studio RAID box, not a drive most people need. The old buyer's guide also said these drives use flash memory. Hard drives don't; they spin.
The WD My Passport stays on top. It has hardware encryption, backup software and a three-year warranty, and it's still sensibly priced. The Seagate Portable takes over from the Seagate Expansion as the cheap, simple choice, the WD Elements Desktop stays for anyone who wants lots of space at home, and the LaCie Rugged Mini replaces the bigger LaCie Rugged.
New are the WD Elements Portable for big capacity on USB power, the WD My Passport Ultra for USB-C, the Apricorn Aegis Padlock for keypad security, and the Toshiba Canvio Advance for the lightest pocket drive.
Two things readers should know. Hard drive prices have risen sharply, so check the current price before you buy. And one external drive isn't a backup on its own, which is why the guide explains the 3-2-1 rule.
December 24, 2020:
They aren't especially fast, but external HDDs offer a ton of storage space for the money, particularly the Seagate Backup Plus and Seagate Expansion. The G-Technology G-Drive is considerably more expensive but promises to work seamlessly with Apple computers, and the LaCie 2big is intended for extremely large collections and offers easily configured RAID support. The Western Digital Elements and Western Digital My Passport happen to be two of the most popular, and the LaCie Rugged is great for keeping documents, videos, photos, and games safe if you're on the road.
May 23, 2019:
Besides the additional storage space, external hard drives offer several benefits over other types of media. These include ease of connectivity, plug-and-play operation, lightning-fast transfer speeds, portability, and durability. Furthermore, these devices can withstand extreme environments, so you aren't limited in the technology you can bring along during your travels. All of these values are important to consider with these devices and I did my best to incorporate them in my updates. I made quite a few changes to this one.
I added the Samsung X5 due to its integrated Thunderbolt 3 technology and non-volatile memory express interface, which makes this little powerhouse one of the fastest in its class compared to the competition (read and write speeds of up to 2,800 and 2,300 MBps). Its rugged construction can also withstand drops of over 6 feet. I know from personal experience that impact protection is very important when traveling with lots of sensitive data. A similar design is built into the Silicon Power Armor A60 with its high-impact rubber casing, integrated suspension system, and water-resistant construction. Included the Seagate Expansion as an all-around dependable desktop option with a large 10-terabyte capacity and extra-long USB cable. I thought the Fantom GForce was a sleek and reliable option, thanks to an internal motor running at up to 7,200 RPM for rapid response times. One of the most annoying things for me when accessing files is the delay I often experience when double clicking on them when they're being stored on a slow external drive or computer. Added the LaCie Mobile for its one-click backup function and because it requires no reformatting. The Oyen Digital Novus comes with an impact-resistant rubber sleeve and a convenient vented design to keep it cool. Included the Western Digital My Passport Go for its integrated cable and compact size, making it ideal for travel. Finally, I wanted to include at least one drive dedicated to console gamers, so the Seagate Game Drive was definitely the product of choice, offering a 2-terabyte SSD flash storage capacity for ensuring speed and smooth multitasking.
Special Honors
Backblaze Personal Backup Backblaze sells cloud backup for a single Windows or Mac computer, and it can include external drives that are attached to that computer. It's a simple way to keep the off-site copy the 3-2-1 rule calls for, so a fire or theft doesn't take your only backup with it. The company also publishes detailed reports on how often hard drives fail in its data centers. backblaze.com
Portable Or Desktop, And How Much Space
A portable drive holds a 2.5-inch disk, fits in a pocket and runs on power from the USB port, so one cable does everything.
Start with where the drive will live. A portable drive holds a 2.5-inch disk, fits in a pocket and runs on power from the USB port, so one cable does everything. Portable drives top out at about 6 TB. A desktop drive holds a bigger 3.5-inch disk, needs its own power adapter and stays on a desk, but it reaches 20 TB and more and usually costs less per terabyte. At current prices, a 10 TB WD Elements Desktop and a 6 TB WD Elements Portable cost about the same per terabyte, while a 2 TB portable costs about half again as much per terabyte and a 1 TB drive more than twice as much.
To pick a size, add up what you want to store and roughly double it, since photo and video libraries only grow. If the drive backs up a whole computer, get at least as much space as the computer's internal drive, and more if you want older versions of files kept.
Don't pay extra for a fast connection. A spinning hard drive reads and writes at roughly 70 to 130 megabytes per second, well under what USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) can carry. Faster links such as 10 Gbps USB or Thunderbolt only matter for solid-state drives (SecureDataRecovery). The plug matters more than the speed: some drives have USB-C, while many still use the older micro-B port with a USB-A cable.
Hard Drive Or SSD, And What Slows A Drive Down
A portable SSD has no moving parts, so it shrugs off drops and is many times faster. In SecureDataRecovery's guide, a Samsung T9 SSD moved data at about 2,000 megabytes per second, against about 80 for a WD My Passport Ultra hard drive (SecureDataRecovery). If you edit video straight off the drive, carry it on a phone, or toss it around, an SSD is worth the price. For backups and large archives, a hard drive still gives far more space for the money.
Some hard drives use shingled magnetic recording, or SMR, which packs data tighter by overlapping tracks. It's fine for copying files in one go, but it can slow to a crawl during long, mixed writes. In AnandTech's tests, an older 5 TB Seagate portable dropped to about 10 megabytes per second under that kind of load (AnandTech). Seagate publishes which of its internal drives use SMR (Seagate), but makers rarely say which recording method an external drive uses.
Only three companies still make hard drives: Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba. LaCie belongs to Seagate, and other brands, such as Apricorn, put one of those three makers' drives inside their own cases.
Backups, Care And Safety
One external drive is a copy, not a backup plan. Backblaze's 3-2-1 rule calls for three copies of your data, on two different devices, with one stored off-site, such as with a cloud backup service (Backblaze). Hard drives do fail. Backblaze's records of its data-center drives show most last well past four or five years, but some fail early, and no brand is immune (Backblaze). Plan to replace an external drive after about five years and to check your copies now and then.
Treat a portable drive gently while it's running, since a drop can damage a spinning disk. Eject it before unplugging, and keep it flat, cool and dry. Many drives ship formatted for Windows. A Mac can usually read them but may not write to them, so reformat a new drive as exFAT to use it on both, or in a Mac format to use it with Time Machine. Reformatting erases the drive, so do it before you copy anything.
Encryption protects a lost drive, but a forgotten password or PIN means the data is gone for good, so store it somewhere safe. We checked the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's database for every brand on this list and found no recalls of external drives (CPSC).
