Best External Hard Drives 2018 There are cheap, affordable and expensive hard drives in our comparison table but you can go through the HDD reviews given below to pick the best hard drive according to your requirements. A 1TB hard drive can costs a little as £40, a 1TB SSD around £240. An external hard drive is, for many, the best solution. The best external hard drive needs to support time machine. This is the default backup software that runs on Macs. A hard drive that supports this software makes it easy for you to backup all your files in it.
The State of Solid State
If you need fast, local storage for lots of files (perhaps the ones that you collect on your phone or camera), you may want to consider a portable solid-state drive (SSD), rather than a portable hard drive.
Once prohibitively expensive, SSDs have continued to fall in price, and external SSDs have begun to emerge as an alternative to portable hard drives, delivering as much as five times the speed. They have no platters to spin up, nor read/write heads that need to travel to a specific point on a platter to find the file you need. And because of the lack of moving parts, external or portable SSDs are usually more compact, slimmer, and better-suited to frequent travel and accidental drops than hard drives—even the most rugged ones.
Why (and Why Not) SSDs?Best External Hard Drive For Mac 2018 Uk
At their hearts, hard drives are mechanical devices that use moving heads to read data stored on platters (or disks) inside the apparatus. The good news is that hard drive technology is fairly advanced (it's existed in some form or another for about 60 years), so it doesn't cost much to implement and thus buy. This means you can get comparatively huge amounts of storage capacity for very little money.
But the same mechanical technology that makes hard drives such a tantalizing value proposition causes other unfortunate issues. If you drop the drive, you could damage the interior mechanism and make your data inaccessible. And, again, hard drives are slow because they can only find your data by physically searching for it. The fastest external drives you'll find spin at about 7,200 revolutions per minute (or rpm), which isn't really all that fast these days. For comparison, internal desktop-class hard drives can have speeds as high as 15,000rpm.
SSDs, on the other hand, store data on flash memory, and thus can access it very quickly. If you're connecting via a higher-speed protocol like USB 3.0 or USB-C, you'll see the most benefit, but there's basically no case in which an SSD won't be faster than a hard drive. And because SSDs have no moving parts, they're a lot hardier, and are better equipped to withstand the drops, bumps, and bruises of everyday use. This doesn't mean they can't be damaged or that you can't still lose data, but you have a lot more leeway.
One downside is that the memory used in these drives can only be written to a limited number of times, so your SSD may become unusable before a hard drive would, depending on how you use it. Another regards traditional storage applications: Hardware-based encryption is, in almost every case, a no-go on SSDs, because data is stored anywhere and everywhere rather than in one easily accessible chunk. And you should never, under any circumstances, run a defragmentation program on your SSD, as you'll be using up valuable writes for no speed benefit you're likely to notice.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of SSDs is price. Want a 2TB external hard drive? You can find one for as little as $75. A 2TB external SSD, on the other hand, will run you about $730, and no, that is not a typo—you'd be paying almost 10 times as much for exactly the same amount of storage. (That same $75 you could spend on the 2TB hard drive will only get you an SSD of about 120GB.) If speed and resilience are critical to you, all that extra money is probably worth it. If they're not, you're needlessly wasting hundreds of dollars. When considering whether to buy an external SSD, make sure you know what you're getting yourself—and your bank account—into.
For more on solid-state drives versus hard drives, read SSD and HDD: What's the Difference?.
External SSD Buying Basics
Here are four key things to look out for when shopping for an external SSD.
Cost per gigabyte: The way to calculate relative value on drives like these is to perform some simple division, and calculate the cost per gigabyte based on the pricing for a given drive on the day you're shopping. Because SSD pricing fluctuates all the time, relative value changes all the time, too. Like with internal SSDs, the way to weigh what you are paying is to divide the price of the SSD by the number of gigabytes in its capacity. So, for example, a $100 120GB portable drive yields a cost per gigabyte of about 83 cents; a $100 250GB drive, in contrast, comes in at 40 cents per gig. The basement for budget external SSDs at this writing was about 25 cents per gigabyte, mostly models from second- or third-tier makers. Use this math to calculate your bottom-line price when comparing a host of drives.
Interface: At the moment, most portable SSDs use standard USB 3.0, though USB Type-C ports are increasingly common. This has no speed consequence, but it's an easier connector to plug in. ADATA's SE730 External SSD and Samsung's Portable SSD T5 use both a USB-C port (at the drive end) and the new USB 3.1 Gen 2 tech (at the host end) for the fastest possible speeds. In our testing, however, neither drive was massively faster over the new port type. They're still plenty speedy if plugged into a USB 3.0 port. A few pricey external SSDs come with Thunderbolt interfaces, but these are generally specialized models meant for use with Macs.
Ruggedization: The degree of ruggedness does vary from drive to drive, with ADATA's SE730 offering leading the field at the moment among mainstream-price drives. IP68 certification is a good spec to look for if you're serious about waterproof and dustproof drives.
Carry Weight: Most SSDs weigh a negligible few ounces. We're partial to the retention loop on the SanDisk Extreme drives, as many of these drives are small and light enough that losing them is too easy and expensive a mistake to make.
Do Yourself a Solid
Below are the top external SSDs we've tested recently. They vary widely in features and price, but should all deliver plenty of speed and peace of mind if that's what you want from your portable storage. Don't need (or don't want to pay for) an SSD? Then check out our roundup of the best external hard drives. If you're building or upgrading your desktop or laptop, read about how to buy the best internal SSD. For other ways to preserve your data, read our lists of the best cloud storage and file-sharing services, the top backup software, and our favorite online backup services.
Best SSDs Featured in This Roundup:
The best Black Friday and Cyber Monday external hard drive deals 2018
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Black Friday External hard drive deals: US / UK
Our editors search through thousands of deals to unearth the best prices from the most trustworthy retailers. Best color printers for mac 2018. You can support us by clicking these independently selected links, as we may earn a commission on any purchase you make – but at no extra cost to you.
Quickbooks for mac desktop 2018.
Anyone working in the creative industries knows the importance of having plenty of storage options. Internal hard disks, and especially SSDs, can quickly fill up when you're banging out multiple versions of massive image files for clients, and even if you have plenty of room on your computer it still pays to have an external drive for backup purposes.
With Cyber Monday 2018 finally here, now's the perfect time to upgrade your external storage. In this post we've gathered together all the very best deals on the best external hard drives, so you can be sure you're getting a bargain. If you know what you're after and how much you want to pay for it, and you see something that fits nicely within your budget, pounce on it now. The best deals won't last long, and you don't want to miss out altogether.
US: Latest deals
WD 2TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive:
Save: $5: Over on Amazon right now you can grab a nice little discount on this 2TB external hard drive. With fast transfer speeds and USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 compatibility, you can't go wrong.
WD 4TB My Passport Ultra for Mac:
Save: $20.85: One for all the Mac users out there, this 4TB silver external hard drive is USB-C ready and comes with 3-year manufacturer's limited warranty.
G-Technology G-DRIVE USB 3.0 10TB External Hard Drive:
Save: $100.38: Save 25% on this 10TB high speed external hard drive that's Mac-ready and easy to reformat for Windows. Comes with 3-year limited warranty as standard.
Seagate Expansion 3TB Desktop External Hard Drive:
Save: $30.19: There are a range of Seagate Expansion external hard drive discounts over at Amazon, but this 3TB deal is the best of the lot. Easy to use and capable of delivering fast transfer speeds, this is good to go out of the box.
Silicon Power 2TB Rugged Portable External Hard Drive Armor A60:
Save: $65: Offering all-round data protection, this military-grade external hard drive can take whatever you throw at it. Perfect for Mac, Windows, Xbox and PS4, the A60 is pre-formatted as FAT32.
WD Easystore 10TB
Save $120: Best Buy is currently leading the way with the external hard drive deals; here you can grab a whole 10TB of storage with $70 off, and they'll throw in a 32GB Easystore USB flash drive too.
WD Easystore 4TB
Save $120: 2018 quicken for mac. Another great bundle from Best Buy. This 4TB Easystore drive from Western Digital should provide you with all the storage you'll need, and it too comes with a 32GB Easystore USB flash drive.
Crucial MX500 2TB SATA SSD:
Save: $121: Grab a massive 37% saving on the massive 2TB Crucial MX500 external hard drive. This is its lowest price ever, so we don't expect stocks to hang around for long. UK: Latest deals
Seagate 4 TB Expansion Amazon Special Edition USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive
Save £9.30: This slimline Seagate drive will hold a respectable 4TB, so there's plenty of room for all your work and more besides, and it's also compatible with XBox One and PS4.
Toshiba HDTB410EK3AA:
Save: 10.85: There are plenty of discounts to be had on Toshiba's external hard drives over on Amazon, with this 1TB model seeing the most money chipped off the price tag.
Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB:
Save: £10.85: The Toshiba deals keep on coming with these discounts on the Canvio basics range. Powered by SuperSpeed USB 3.0, these external hard drives are too cheap to miss.
Transcend StoreJet 4TB
Save £27.71: Right now you can grab this spacious 4TB Transcend StoreJet drive at a great price, and thanks to its rugged military-grade body you can be sure your precious files are safe.
Crucial MX500 2TB SATA SSD:
Save: £98.41: UK shoppers can also pick up this huge discount on the amazing 2TB Crucial MX500 memory card. Capable of reading/writing 95/90K, you don't want to miss it. The best Black Friday/Cyber Monday external hard drive deals: what we expect to see
Let's be clear: external drives aren't especially sexy tech, so you're not going to see much in the way of headline-grabbing Cyber Monday hard drive deals. If you're after a bargain external drive then you're going to have to look hard for it; or rather, just sit back and let us do the hunting.
Your best bet for a getting a great deal on an external drive is to keep an eye on the big names. Companies such as Western Digital, Seagate, LaCie and Sandisk are notable for having large ranges of external drives, and they're introducing new models on a pretty regular basis.
This means that come Black Friday and Cyber Monday, they're likely to have plenty of stock of models that have either been recently superseded by a newer version, or simply aren't selling as well as other external drives in their range, and these will be the most obvious candidates for the best deals.
Our top tip for Black Friday and Cyber Monday external hard drive bargains is to look out for Western Digital offers. The company has recently reported a big drop in profits, and it might try to tackle this by driving Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales with some attractive deals. Watch this space.
How to get the best external hard drive deals on Black Friday/Cyber Monday
If you have your heart set on Black Friday external hard drive deals then the best thing you can do is start looking out for them now. There's an increasing amount of competition between retailers to shift their discounted stock, so every year we're seeing stores and sites kick off their Black Friday sales earlier.
Figure out your budget and exactly what kind of drive you're looking for. If you need plenty of storage and aren't too worried about transfer speeds then you should probably concentrate on old-fashioned hard drives; they might not be fast but they'll give you a lot more gigabytes for your buck.
If speed's important, though, you should look for an SSD instead. They're fast and reliable, and because they have no moving parts they're a lot more suitable for taking out and about with you. The downside is that you get a lot less storage than you would from a comparably priced hard disk.
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Always look for big name brands such as Western Digital or Seagate when you're searching for an external drive; not only are these where you'll probably find the best deals, you can also be much more certain of getting a reliable drive that won't fail on you. If you spot a dirt-cheap drive from a brand you've never heard of, look around for reviews to get an idea of its reliability; it could be cheap for a very good reason, and it's probably not where you want to stash your important backups.
Don't forget to check an assortment of retailers for the biggest choice. Amazon's Black Friday deals are always worth a look, but explore some other online stores as well. Some of them might have cashback offers that could save you a bit extra, so that's always worth looking out for.
Finally, use the same common sense that you would when making any purchase online; check the guarantee, make sure you're buying from a reputable store, and keep your receipt just in case you change your mind later on.
External hard drive features/specs that creatives should look out for
Once you've decided whether you need a hard disk or an SSD, the key thing to look for is the amount of storage you'll get. It all depends on your needs, naturally; 500GB is probably fine if you don't work with enormous files, but if your business involves videos then you're probably well into terabyte territory.
Beyond that, the most important thing to check is what type of connections an external drive has. At the very minimum you'll need a USB 3.0 connection; anything less and you'll be waiting ages for your files to transfer back and forth. If you have a recent Mac then it may have a Thunderbolt 3 port; if so, try to find a drive that's compatible and you'll get lightning-fast transfer speeds.
3 external hard drive to look out for on Black Friday/Cyber MondayWestern Digital My Passport 4TB
The overall best external hard drive for Mac or PC
Reasons to Buy
Good data transfer speeds
Reasons to Avoid
For an excellent all-round external hard drive, you'll have a tough job beating Western Digital's My Passport 4TB. The latest generation features excellent transfer speeds and cloud storage options as well as 256-AES encryption to keep your files safe, and WD's backup software will take care of transferring your data.
Adata SD700 External SSD
SPECIFICATIONS
Capacity: 256GB, 512GB or 1TB | Interface: USB 3.0
Reasons to Buy
IP68 rating
Reasons to Avoid
If you want a fast, portable drive that won't cost the earth, Adata's SD700 External SSD presses all the right buttons. It's an SSD with excellent transfer speeds that can take quite a bit of mistreatment; its IP68 rating means it can withstand dust, dirt and sand, and it's resistant to submersion in up to 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes. It's available in capacities up to 1TB.
WD My Book Duo 16TB
The best high capacity external drive for your Mac or PC
Reasons to Buy
RAID support
Reasons to Avoid
Requires two free USB 3.0 ports
Serious about protecting your files? This 16TB monster from Western Digital is for you. You can either use the full 16TB, or you can instead run the My Book Duo's two 8TB drives in a RAID configuration, meaning that should one fail you'll still have a safe backup on the other. This USB 3.0 drive also features 256-bit AES encryption and automatic backup software; bear in mind though that it's formatted for Windows, so if you're on a Mac it'll need reformatting.
Today's best pre-Black Friday external hard drive deals
What's that? You can't wait until Black Friday to grab to grab a lovely external hard drive deal? Fear not; we've found all the best deals available right now.
Today's best pre-Black Friday external hard drive dealsBest Mac Compatible External Hard Drive
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