Finest exterior drives 2023: Opinions and shopping for recommendation

When you use a PC, likelihood is you’ve gotten knowledge saved on it that you simply don’t wish to lose. Among the best methods to verify your knowledge isn’t misplaced is to avoid wasting a duplicate onto an exterior drive. It’s a cheap and useful option to again up your vital information or retailer any overflow. It can be a handy option to transport or switch information between your gadgets.

You’ll nearly at all times have the necessity for extra storage as knowledge information proceed to get bigger and also you accumulate extra of them. An exterior drive is likely one of the greatest methods to cowl your self in case of an emergency. We’ve examined quite a few exterior drives and curated the perfect picks beneath. We’ve included exterior drives with blazing-fast efficiency in addition to a decide for greatest funds possibility, greatest moveable SSD, and every little thing in between. Beneath our suggestions you’ll discover further useful info on what you must know to decide on the perfect exterior drive on your wants.

Up to date 01/10/2023: Take a look at our newest evaluation of the Seagate Skywalker 2TB exterior HDD. This old-school Star Wars-themed exterior 2.5-inch, USB onerous drive has good efficiency and a enjoyable, collector version aesthetic that may attraction to followers.

1. Samsung T7 Protect – Finest efficiency USB drive

Execs

• Quick 10Gbps storage
• Rugged outer pores and skin for IP65 ranking
• As much as 2TB in capability
• Svelte styling

Cons

• No 20Gbps
• Not full immersion rated

MSRP:

$160 for 1TB | $290 for 2TB

We’re followers of Samsung’s (nonetheless glorious) T7 Contact, and now we’re ever greater followers of the follow-up T7 Protect. The USB 10Gbps drive is available in each 1TB and 2TB capacities, for $160 and $290, respectively. Whereas the Contact distinguished itself with a fingerprint reader for knowledge safety, the Protect leans in to bodily safety, with an IP65 ranking towards particulate matter and water spray, making it a great efficiency drive for out within the subject. (Thoughts you, the Protect can nonetheless be secured with password safety.)

We additionally admire that the Protect bests its predecessor in write speeds, giving it the efficiency increase it wanted to supplant SanDisk’s Excessive Professional Transportable SSD (beneath) as our high efficiency decide.

Learn our full
Overview Samsung T7 Protect

2. SanDisk Excessive Professional Transportable SSD – Finest efficiency drive runner-up

Execs

• Total quickest USB SSD at the moment out there
• Comparatively inexpensive
• IP55 rated towards mud and gentle streams of water

Cons

• Barely slower studying information than Samsung’s T7

Whereas we’ve moved SanDisk’s Excessive Professional Transportable SSD (1TB) to runner-up standing in mild of the Samsung T7’s improved write speeds, make no mistake, it’s nonetheless one the quickest USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) exterior SSD we’ve examined so far. It’s barely dearer than the T7 Protect, at $190 for 1GB and $300 for 2GB, and it’s rated at IP55 for barely much less safety from the weather. However each are glorious performers.

Be aware: There are sooner USB 3.2 2×2 (also referred to as SuperSpeed 20Gbps) SSDs out there, such because the WD Black P50 and Seagate Barracuda Quick SSD. Nonetheless, SuperSpeed 20Gbps and USB4 ports are nonetheless so uncommon, we’re undecided it issues. These drives are additionally simply not as svelte because the Excessive Professional.

Learn our full
Overview SanDisk Excessive Professional Transportable SSD

3. WD Black P50 Sport Drive SSD (1TB) – Finest for gaming

Execs

• As much as 2GBps with SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps
• Distinctively militaristic styling

Cons

• Dear in comparison with SuperSpeed 10Gbps drives
• Requires the extraordinarily uncommon SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps port for full efficiency

Immediately’s video games can take in 50GB or 100GB of storage and extra. When you’re searching for a drive to rapidly load that sport from in your gaming laptop computer, we advocate WD’s Black P50 Sport Drive. And no, not simply as a result of it’s actually referred to as “Sport Drive,” however as a result of we favor sport’s to be launched from an SSD the place it may actually be a aggressive benefit in some titles. Working an exterior SSD on your video games additionally means far, far sooner degree hundreds, too, in comparison with a plodding onerous drive. Whereas many PCs don’t have the USB SuperSpeed 20Gbps ports wanted to make the Black P50 sing, it’s truly changing into pretty commonplace in newer desktops. The excellent news is, even operating a sport at USB 10Gbps speeds means reads and writes as much as 1,000MBps, which continues to be an enormous enchancment over a tough drive. (Study extra about how we consider the perfect exterior SSD for gaming.)

4. SanDisk Skilled G-Drive SSD – Finest for photographers

Execs

• Quickest USB 10Gbps drive so far
• IP67 rated towards mud and water
• Trendy
• The identical or lower-priced than the competitors

MSRP:

$139 – 500GB; $189 – 1TB; $349 – 2TB; $679.99 – 4TB

We’re somewhat torn between recommending a Thunderbolt-based drive for exterior storage versus a USB exterior drive. Whereas a Thunderbolt 3 exterior SSD usually gives increased efficiency, that doesn’t assist you to in case your laptop computer doesn’t have a Thunderbolt port, and lots of of these drives don’t have any USB help. That makes SanDisk’s G-Drive SSD the popular drive. It doesn’t help the extra superior, and in addition uncommon, USB SuperSpeed 20Gbps speeds, however it’s within the high tier with USB 10Gbps speeds, which is what you’ll largely discover. Maybe extra importantly for a photographer transferring information within the subject, is its robust shell. The drive is constructed with IP67 water-resistance and dust-resistance rankings and might face up to 2,000 kilos of weight, so that you gained’t lose that valuable photograph of a ghost cat within the mountains of Afganistan.

5. Essential X6 Transportable SSD (2TB) – Finest funds possibility

Execs

• Ergonomic design
• Good on a regular basis efficiency
• Very inexpensive for an exterior SSD

Cons

• Efficiency tanks when cache runs out

The Essential X6 Transportable SSD is sq. to be hip. Or positioned in your hip pocket, at any fee. In a sea of moveable SSDs whose form makes them a literal ache when pocketed, the skinny, rounded-edge X6 is a sigh of reduction. It’s not state-of-the-art quick, however it’s quick sufficient for many customers and very inexpensive.

Learn our full
Overview Essential X6 Transportable SSD (2TB)

6. Adata Elite SE880 SSD – Most moveable exterior drive

Execs

• Very quick, over-20Gbps USB connection
• Extraordinarily small type issue
• 5-year guarantee

Cons

• Slows significantly throughout lengthy contiguous writes
• Considerably low TBW ranking

MSRP:

$79.99 for 500GB I $129.99 for 1TB

No exterior SSD we’ve seen can match Adata’s Elite SE880 for portability. Certainly, measuring in at solely 2.55 inches lengthy, 1.38 inches huge, and 0.48 inches thick, it reminds you extra of a USB thumb drive than an ordinary exterior SSD. It weighs a mere 1.1 ounces besides, just about disappearing in your pocket.

The Elite SE880 can also be very quick at on a regular basis duties however slows down throughout lengthy writes. In real-world 48GB switch assessments, the drive displayed excellent marks, even beating out another opponents on this record. However it misplaced vital floor within the longer contiguous write assessments, displaying that photograph and video execs with massive information to switch would possibly wish to contemplate different choices.

Learn our full
Overview Adata Elite SE880 SSD

7. Kingston XS200 USB SSD – Most moveable high-capacity drive

Execs

• Tremendous svelte
• Good 20Gbps efficiency
• Accessible in as much as 4TB in capability

Cons

• Slower than a lot of the competitors
• Not a lot of a looker

MSRP:

$75 for 500GB I $160 for 1TB I $285 for 2TB I $500 for 4TB

The Kingston XS2000 is an admirable mix of dimension, capability, and pace—all for an inexpensive worth. With as much as 4TB in capability, it’s akin to among the largest drives on this record however it suits in your pocket.

The Kingston XS2000 additionally has knowledge switch charges of as much as 20Gbps, which isn’t lightning quick, however it beats the 10Gbps of some opponents. Total, this small, surprisingly inexpensive, and decently quick SSD is a strong product, particularly when you plan to hold lots of knowledge round with you.

Learn our full
Overview Kingston XS200 USB SSD

8. Transportable SSD X5 – Finest Thunderbolt 3 drive

Cons

• Lack of AC jack makes it Thunderbolt 3 solely
• Costly, although not out of whack for NVMe SSDs

In case you have Thunderbolt 3 or 4 in your system, you owe it to your self to take a look at a transportable Thunderbolt 3 drive akin to Samsung’s SSD X5. As an NVMe SSD utilizing PCIe over a cable (that’s mainly what Thunderbolt 3 is), it’s stupidly quick—over 2.5GBps studying and writing. 

The one cause we don’t universally advocate the Transportable SSD X5 is the relative rarity of Thunderbolt 3/4 ports on PCs. The arrival of USB4 ought to alleviate this, however provided that distributors determine to mix it with the superset know-how that’s Thunderbolt 4. Or you could merely quickly see USB4 drives with the identical 40Gbps switch charges. It will get sophisticated. 

9. WD My Passport 5TB – Finest for backups

Execs

• Glorious value per gigabyte
• Good styling
• Complete software program suite

Cons

• Slower than common with massive information

You wish to know why we selected WD’s My Passport 5TB for backups? It’s proper there within the title—that further 1TB might be invaluable within the age of 4K.

Learn our full
Overview WD My Passport 5TB

10. Seagate Backup Plus Transportable – Finest for backups runner-up

Execs

• As much as 5TB in a 2.5-inch package deal
• Reasonably priced

Cons

• Sluggish writing small information and folders

Just like the WD above, Seagate’s Backup Plus Transportable is a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps) drive—loads sufficient bandwidth for the onerous drive inside. Capability tops out at 5TB, however the drive can also be out there in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes. 

In our assessments of the 4TB model, we discovered the Seagate to be barely sooner than the WD with massive file transfers (suppose motion pictures), however slower with small file transfers (suppose Workplace paperwork). All in all, a worthy runner-up.

Learn our full
Overview Seagate Backup Plus Transportable

What you must know before you purchase

Capability and worth

For many shoppers, the primary procuring issues for exterior storage are capability and worth. Nonetheless, when you would possibly suppose that the lowest-cost drive gives probably the most worth, it typically doesn’t. In truth, greenback for greenback, cheaper low-capacity drives are most frequently the worst deal traditionally. We’ve been doing this comparability for years and it’s at all times been the worst worth.

You may see that beneath the place we examine the favored WD Components desktop onerous drive’s out there capacities and costs. You’re paying greater than twice as a lot for the lowest-capacity drive versus the subsequent step up. It’s nearly equally as unhealthy on the WD Components Transportable drive.

How a lot capability do you want?

The perfect “worth” are usually for the biggest onerous drives as you possibly can see, however it brings significantly increased costs and never everybody wants that a lot capability. So how a lot do you want? We advocate a backup drive not less than twice as massive as the overall capability of your PC. In case you have 1TB of storage in your PC, 2TB will can help you make a full backup whereas holding historic backups on the identical drive. Having extra storage means that you can preserve extra historic information do you have to want them or use the identical drive to backup further PCs.

Whereas the desktop drive gives a far increased capability, additionally they require extra cables, weigh extra, and customarily will not be fairly as shock resistant as a transportable onerous drive that’s designed to take just a few extra bumps, even when on.

IDG

Interface

The overwhelming majority of exterior drives in the present day are USB drives. Past that easy assertion, the story will get complicated—largely due to the plethora of variations: USB 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps, which is mainly USB 3.0), USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps), and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps), and now the up-and-coming USB4. In an try to simplify issues, the USB Discussion board has just lately modified the nomenclature to point throughput pace—SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps, SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps, and SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps—as a result of efficiency is a precedence for many makes use of. For the sake of brevity (and sanity), we usually shorten these names to USB 10Gbps, or 10Gbps USB, as an example.

No onerous drive, until mixed in RAID with others, can outstrip the 5Gbps (roughly 500MBps real-world after overhead) throughput of USB 3.1 Gen 1. Don’t fear about Gen 2, 10Gbps, or Thunderbolt with single onerous drive enclosures as a result of it doesn’t actually matter.

The place SuperSpeed 10Gbps/20Gbps, USB4, or Thunderbolt will certainly assistance is with the aforementioned RAID onerous drive setups, or extra seemingly—an SSD. The excellent news is that whereas USB 3.1 Gen 2, which is greater than quick sufficient for many customers at 10Gbps, was costly, it’s mainly the usual in the present day. A SanDisk Excessive Transportable SSD, our runner-up for moveable storage, might be had for $90 in a 500GB capability.

The sooner USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 20Gbps (Gen 2×2) strikes you right into a higher-price bracket, with the Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSD costing $200 for a similar 500GB of storage. Though sooner than the standard USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 10Gbps, there aren’t lots of USB 20Gbps gen 2×2 ports on the market, however these drives ought to work with the upcoming USB4 on the identical 20Gbps tempo.

Thunderbolt 3 and the newer Thunderbolt 4 usually are the highest-performing interfaces for exterior storage, with the important thing limitation being a premium worth and a basic lack of compatibility with the much more fashionable USB 3.2 ports on the earth. Nonetheless, if you would like probably the most efficiency, you may get it in drives akin to our advisable moveable, the Samsung Transportable SSD X5, which is $200 for 500GB of capability. For comparability, a slower 1TB Samsung T5 on USB is barely $125.

Ports

Exterior drives include a wide range of ports, although they’re progressively consolidating on the Kind-C connector. Right here’s what you must care about:

USB 3 Micro-B Superspeed. That is nonetheless a quite common port on many lower-cost moveable and desktop exterior onerous drives in the present day. It’s truly the identical Micro USB port used in your cellphone, however beefed up with extra knowledge strains to hit USB 3.0 speeds. It’ll do 5Gbps and is okay for onerous drives and SATA (internally) SSDs. 

USB 3 Kind-B is the bigger, blocky model of USB 3.0 Micro B. Kind B ports have gotten uncommon, although you would possibly discover one on enclosures supporting 5.25-inch onerous drives or optical drives. It helps speeds as much as 5Gbps. 

USB-C is the newest of the USB connectors the world is coalescing round. You see it in every little thing from telephones to laptops. Bear in mind, USB-C refers solely to the connector itself. What’s carried over the wires varies significantly. For instance, for knowledge transfers from an exterior drive, a USB-C port may imply every little thing from USB 2.0 Excessive Pace (480Mbps) to USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 20Gbps in addition to USB4 and Thunderbolt 3. Any increased efficiency port in the present day needs to be USB-C—simply keep in mind that simply because it’s USB-C doesn’t imply the precise electronics contained in the PC or drive can hit the best speeds of what a USB-C port can do.

USB Kind-A You gained’t discover this port on any drive, however you will see this acquainted rectangular port on PCs and laptops. The rationale we point out it’s that any drive with a Kind-C port ought to include a Kind-C to Kind-A cable or adapter, hopefully, since most PCs have these.

Thunderbolt 2 is at this level, a lifeless port. Utilizing the mini-DisplayPort connector, it solely actually gained reputation on Macs, and even Apple put it out to pasture in 2017. There’s no have to put money into a Thunderbolt 2 drive until it’s for legacy help points.

Be aware that Apple makes a bi-directional Thunderbolt 1/2 to three adapter if you must join the one to the opposite. It doesn’t switch energy, nevertheless, so you possibly can’t apply it to its personal with bus-powered exterior drives. You’ll want a powered dock for that.

eSATA is one other legacy port that’s mainly disappeared. Created for attaching exterior storage to your pc’s SATA bus, eSATA was an affordable approach in its day to get past the 60MBps efficiency of USB 2.0. USB 3.0 put the final nail in its coffin. As with Thunderbolt 2, the one cause to put money into an eSATA drive is to be used with older computer systems.

A second drive as backup?

In backup, there’s a basic maxim appropriately named the Rule of Three. It states that it is best to at all times keep three copies of your irreplaceable knowledge: the unique knowledge, a backup, and a backup of the backup. Ideally, the 2 backups are stored in separate places, one being offsite. Retaining a duplicate on-line is nice for smaller quantities of information and positively meets the offsite standards. Nonetheless, for huge photograph, audio, and/or video collections, exterior drives in pairs (or extra), are a sooner, extra sensible answer.  

Create full backups alternately to the 2 drives each few months. True patrons of knowledge would possibly even take the second drive to work, so there’s no probability of shedding each drives to the identical native catastrophe.

For extra steerage on constructing out the perfect backup plan potential, see our roundups of the perfect cloud backup companies and greatest Home windows backup software program.

How we examined

We use our commonplace storage take a look at mattress to guage the efficiency of each exterior drive we evaluation. It’s a six-core (twelve-thread) Intel Core i7-5820K on an Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard with 64GB of Kingston DDR4 reminiscence operating Home windows 10. 

A discrete Gigabyte Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 card and Ableconn USB 3.2 2×2 20Gbps card (Asmedia 2142 controller) are used for connecting the exterior drives. An Asus USB 3.1/10Gbps (Asmedia 1142 controller) card was employed for among the older drives on the chart. 

We run numerous artificial benchmarks together with Crystal Disk Mark 6/7/8, AS SSD 2, and Iometer. We additionally carry out real-world switch assessments utilizing a 48GB batch of small information and folders, in addition to a single 48GB and 450GB information. The testbed boots from a NVMe drive, however the real-world (Home windows) file transfers are carried out to and from a 58GB RAM disk.