If you are working out of cupboard space in your laptop computer, or if you might want to again up your information and retailer that backlog of movies you are going to edit in the future (I’m, I swear), an exterior onerous drive can resolve your drawback. The hassle is, there are a whole lot of drive choices starting from grime low cost to loopy costly—which one is true in your wants? I’ve examined dozens with completely different use circumstances in thoughts to search out the perfect moveable storage drives in your workflow. 

Be positive to take a look at our different guides, together with How to Back Up and Move Your Photos Between Services, How to Back Up Your Digital Life, and How to Back Up Your iPhone.

Updated January 2023: We’ve added Western Digital’s new P40 gaming drive. We additionally added the newest drive stats report from Backblaze and up to date costs all through.

Table of Contents

Special provide for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This consists of limitless entry to WIRED.com and our print journal (if you would like). Subscriptions assist fund the work we do day-after-day.

If you purchase one thing utilizing hyperlinks in our tales, we could earn a fee. This helps help our journalism. Learn more.

I do know this information is for moveable onerous drives, and that is decidedly not moveable, however bear with me. For incremental backups, which we recommend, portability is not your high precedence. And sometimes, your backup software program will run in a single day, so pace is not an enormous issue both. That’s why the primary drive I like to recommend is that this Western Digital Elements.

I’ve been utilizing some variation of the WD Elements desktop onerous drive to make incremental backups of my information for greater than a decade now. They’re huge and require exterior energy, however these are a number of the most cost-effective, most dependable drives I’ve used. Storage choices go all the way in which as much as 20 terabytes. Just be sure you examine the costs; generally you may get a 10- and even 12-terabyte drive for not way more.

Other Great Backup Drives:

• Seagate Portable HDD 8 TB for $180: Seagate is one other dependable drive maker. It by no means hurts to have extra backups, and if you happen to do need a number of backups, use drives from completely different manufacturers, since it is going to scale back the possibility that each fail on the identical time. This 8-terabyte mannequin is commonly on sale for round $150.
• Western Digital Elements 5-TB Portable HDD for $110: You can even get a way more moveable model of the Western Digital drive for a lot much less, and it does not require exterior energy. The 4-terabyte mannequin is commonly on sale for below $100.

These Crucial drives are my favourite moveable drives. They’re fairly priced (for a conveyable SSD) and really speedy. The solely drive I examined with quicker learn speeds is the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD (see under). These are light-weight, which implies they’re preferrred for if you’re working away from dwelling. I take advantage of one to retailer video clips, and it is lots quick sufficient to edit them proper off the disk. 

The solely draw back is the plastic building. Don’t count on it to outlive many drops. If you are frightened about it breaking into your bag, seize a padded case. I have not tried it, however there are lots on the market like this one for $14.

This new moveable drive from SanDisk trounces all the pieces else I’ve examined. It’s light-weight, with IP22-rated enclosures so it’s going to stand as much as life on the go. It’s not the most cost effective drive, however if you happen to’re backing up within the area and need to get it executed as quick as potential, it is your finest wager. I additionally like that it is much less compact than a few of these drives—it makes it simpler to maintain monitor of in my bag.

Other Speedy Drives

Another various: 

If you want a drive that may stand as much as life in a backpack or camera bag, get moist, or deal with a drop onto onerous surfaces, OWC drives are your most suitable option. It’s powerful to select a winner right here as a result of there are numerous stable choices, however OWC’s Elektron drive narrowly beat others in benchmark exams. I additionally like that you may swap out the drive contained in the aluminum casing (it is easy to unscrew), which implies two years from now, you’ll be able to decide up a quicker naked SSD and drop it within the Elektron. 

If you need a bigger drive, each bodily and when it comes to storage capability, OWC’s Envoy Pro FX ($280 for 1 TB) makes an excellent alternative as effectively. It’s even quicker and is available in sizes as much as 4 TB, although the latter will set you again a staggering $900. For most, the 2-TB mannequin is lots, although nonetheless dear at $400. It’s IP67-rated and fairly drop-proof. (Take all claims of “military standard” with a grain of salt—there’s no one actually doing independent tests, which isn’t to select on OWC, as each “rugged” drive maker claims issues like this.) What impressed me essentially the most about this drive, although, is how extremely cool it stays even below a heavy load (like modifying 4K video footage straight from the drive).

Other Rugged Options: 

• Sabrent Rocket Nano SSD 1 TB for $120: I actually like this one. It’s smaller and barely quicker than the OWC, nevertheless it has two drawbacks. The first is that it may get actually sizzling. If you are attempting to work with it in your lap, it may be downright uncomfortable. The different challenge is that generally it is gradual to be acknowledged by my PC. I may discover no sample to this; generally it appeared straight away, different occasions it took a few minutes. If these issues do not trouble you, this drive is tiny, cheaper, and comes with a padded rubber case.

The go-anywhere drives above are a stable answer for individuals who have to make backups within the area, like photographers and videographers. But if you’d like an additional degree of consolation, this padded drive from LaCie has lengthy been a favourite of vacationers. LaCie makes each an SSD model and a standard spinning drive model. If pace is not a difficulty, as with making nightly backups, then the cheaper spinning drive makes extra sense. If you are truly backing up in the course of a photograph shoot or comparable scenario the place it must occur quick, the SSD model is what you need.

Other Padded Options:

• Samsung T7 Shield 2 TB for $180: It is not as padded as LaCie’s rugged drives, nevertheless it’s cheaper and delivers practically the identical pace. It has an IP65 rating, which implies it is superb within the rain and shielded from mud and sand, and Samsung says it’s going to survive a fall from 9.8 toes. The T7 line is notable for its built-in safety features like hardware-based encryption, however not like the Touch model, the Shield doesn’t have a fingerprint reader. Still, if you happen to do not want the total padded safety of the LaCie and need to save a bit of cash, the T7 Shield is an effective possibility.

Take this class with a grain of salt. Most of the drives right here will work simply superb for gaming (simply follow the quickest you’ll be able to afford). That mentioned, Western Digital’s new P40 does have some cool RGB lights on the underside if that is your jam. Surprisingly, in my testing, that did not appear to have any impression on energy consumption. 

In phrases of pace, my exams have been very inconsistent. This drive was able to speeds that handily beat each the Envoy Pro and Samsung T7, however at different occasions appeared to bathroom down (at the least in benchmarks). In actual world use, the one bottleneck I constantly hit was some lag in transferring big quantities of information. That is likely to be a deal breaker for some, however for the value this stays a really stable alternative.

If you need to put a much bigger SSD in your laptop computer, all you want is a naked drive, which is mostly cheaper than the drives with enclosures listed above. The very first thing to determine is which drive your PC makes use of. Consult your producer’s documentation to search out out. In my expertise, the most typical kind issue is M.2 2280, which is the lengthy skinny drive within the picture above. More compact laptops could use the same, however shorter, M.2 2242 design. Again, examine your PC to substantiate the drive it wants before you purchase. There are a ton of those in the marketplace and I have not had time to check many but, however to this point, out of the half dozen I’ve tried, Western Digital’s WD Black sequence has stood out for pace, they usually do not run extremely popular. 

The SN 770 M.2 2280 achieved speeds of 5,100 MB per second in my testing, which is blazing quick. If you are doing quite a lot of drive-intensive duties, like modifying video or gaming, this drive is effectively well worth the cash. The largest model you may get proper now’s 2 TB, however the worth is cheap contemplating the pace enhance. I’ve been utilizing it as my predominant drive for a number of months and located it to be quick sufficient for all the pieces I do, together with modifying 5.2K video footage and compiling software program. My favourite half? It generates little or no warmth. My older Dell XPS 13 used to get too sizzling to make use of with out one thing between it and my lap. Now it does not get sizzling till I begin attempting to export video, however rapidly cools off as quickly because it’s executed.

Picking the proper onerous drive comes all the way down to balancing three issues: pace, dimension, and worth. If you are making nightly backups, then pace in all probability does not matter. Go for the most cost effective drive you will discover—up to a degree. Drives do not final perpetually, however some undoubtedly last more than others. I recommend sticking with identified manufacturers which have repute like Seagate, Western Digital, and the others featured right here. This is predicated partly on expertise and partly on the drive failure information that Backblaze has been publishing for years now. Backblaze goes by way of huge quantities of onerous drives backing up clients’ information, and its report is value studying. The takeaway is straightforward: Stick with names you realize.

If pace trumps worth, you then need to have a look at the solid-state drives we have listed right here. SSDs do not simply have a pace benefit. They additionally lack shifting components, which implies they’re going to face up to the bumps and falls of life in a bag on the highway higher than spinning drives. The drawback is that they will put on out quicker. Every write operation to an SSD—that’s, if you save one thing to it—barely degrades the person NAND cells that make up the drive, which wears it out considerably quicker than a spinning drive. Just how a lot quicker will depend on how you employ it. That mentioned, I’ve a number of SSDs which might be greater than 5 years previous, and I’ve used them for every day backups all through that point. None of them have had any issues. 

When would you need an SSD over a spinning drive? The reply is nearly all the time sure—if you happen to can afford it. But they’re particularly helpful for any drive you are working with usually: your predominant boot drive, an exterior drive you employ to edit paperwork from, and even for backups if you happen to want them to occur quick.