PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt. NY 10036. Here's why: if you're not backing up your Mac's data in multiple places, then you're not as safe and secure as you possibly can be. The silver lining is that Thunderbolt 3 via USB Type-C supports a blazing maximum potential throughput of 40Gbps, double the speed of the old Thunderbolt 2 standard and many times the 5GBps that USB 3.0 offers. Some highly specialized external drives might not work with Macs even if they're formatted correctly, but consumers looking for extra space simply to store backups or large video collections aren't likely to encounter them. As a result, they are typically external SSDs, or multidrive RAID arrays, which means they're also very expensive. Combining on-point performance and strong encryption, Seagate's Backup Plus Ultra Touch portable drive is a great choice for everyday backups and security-first use alike. G-Technology G-Drive USB 3.0 protects your data from knocks and drops. 8 Best external hard drives for mac. You will receive a verification email shortly. These come in both portable and "desktop" versions; the portables are obviously smaller, and based on the kinds of 2.5-inch platter drives used in laptops. No tab over Type-C connector to protect it from dust and water. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and—unlike the file system—the type you buy is the type you're stuck with for the life of the drive. Samsung T3 SSD is a super-fast external hard drive for your Mac. Bundled cables for USB Type-A and Type-C on PC side. Whether you’re a creative professional who needs a lot of storage space for those high-resolution images and videos or you simply need something to back up all your files on, you’ll find the perfect solution right here. 1.1 1. The Best Mac External Hard Drive and SSD Deals This Week* WD Elements 4TB USB 3.0 Portable Drive — $94.99 (List Price $139.99) Seagate Expansion 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive — … Some drives come in a variety of colors. An array contains two or more drives that all work together to increase throughput, or guard your precious files against corruption via drive redundancy if one of the drives fail. 10 best external hard drives for keeping your data safe If you want to back-up your photos, or your Mac or PC is low on space, use one of these gadgets (See our roundup of the best external SSDs for more discussion of this.). Sign up for What's New Now to get our top stories delivered to your inbox every morning. With the release of the macOS High Sierra operating system, Cupertino ditched its venerable Mac OS Extended file system, commonly abbreviated as HFS+, and switched to an entirely new file format. 1.5.1 Pros; 1.5.2 Cons; 1.6 6. You might pay £340 for a 1TB portable SSD, whereas a 1TB external hard drive costs around £50. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. This is a great external hard drive for your Mac if you are concerned about keeping your data safe and secure. Extremely fast data transfer speeds, thanks to Thunderbolt 3 and PCIe NVMe interfaces. Perhaps not the most convenient, but at just $140 on Amazon it’s great value. Having an external hard drive for your Mac is a necessity these days. Lexar's speedy SL100 Pro external SSD is a useful, affordable bit of storage kit for general users and media pros alike. Best External Hard Drive Overall: LaCie Mobile SSD Best External Hard Drive with Largest Portable Capacity: WD 5TB My Passport Ultra External Hard Drive with Largest Desktop Capacity: G … If you really want a super-fast external hard drive for your Mac, then the Samsung T3 SSD is easily one of the best. It does mean the price is higher, but if transfer speed is the most important consideration when looking for the best external hard drive for your Mac, then this is the drive to go for. Small, light, and even mailable, it earns the right to add "extremely" in front of "fast and rugged. Western Digital My Passport offers a good balance between speed, capacity and price. If you're shopping for a fast, Mac-matching external SSD that will look just as good in the boardroom as it will on the side of a mountain, the Envoy Pro EX With USB-C is the drive for you. Ships with apps for backup/restore, reformatting and checking drive health, and more. Unfortunately, you won't find all that many Thunderbolt 3-compatible drives on the market. Visit our corporate site. If you decide in favour of hard drives, see our roundup of the best Mac hard drives. Desktop-style external hard drives are larger, are based on the beefier and more capacious 3.5-inch drives used in full-size desktop PCs, and require their own AC power source. Click here to make sure you pick the right hard drive for your needs. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. LaCie's two-drive Rugged RAID Shuttle offers the choice of high capacity and fast performance (in striped mode), or of half the capacity with all data mirrored on the second disk. There’s a reason for that: the Porsche Design ships with both USB Type-C to Type-A and USB Type-C to Type-C connectors, making it a worthy candidate regardless of your setup. Best for Photo and Video Pros in the Field, Best for Security-Concious Frequent Travelers, Best for Maximum Flexibility, Data Protection, Best for Outdoor Enthusiasts and Business Professionals, Best for Content Creators Seeking Extreme Speed. This portable external hard drive from Western Digital, encased in a stylish silver body, will perfectly match any modern computer rig and will let you safely store and encrypt massive … It's ideal for anyone who works in the field and produces oodles of data. For professional videographers who edit lots of 4K footage and gamers or movie buffs who have large libraries of multi-gigabyte titles, an external RAID array made up of multiple platter-based drives is worth considering, since it combines the near-speed of an SSD with the gargantuan possible capacities of spinning drives. Protect the data on your external hard drive with this cloud storage solution. Any drive formatted with HFS+ will work just fine with a Mac that's running macOS High Sierra or later. If someone tries to tamper with your iStorage drive, you can configure it to self-desturct. Best External Hard Drive for Mac: Samsung T5 The Samsung T5 is everything we want out of an external hard drive. Most of the current models that use the Apple-friendly interface are designed for photographers and video editors who need to store mountains of footage and access it very quickly. And at … It does mean the price is higher, but if transfer speed is the most important consideration when looking for the best external hard drive for your Mac, then this is the drive to go for. This drive is preformatted just for you, offering a high transfer rate for fast file access and connects easily via USB-C. Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, While transfer speeds aren't the quickest, due to its USB 3.0 connection, it offers a good balance between speed, capacity and price. There are many benefits to switching from HFS+ to APFS, including better security thanks to native encryption, but the most important thing to note for external drive shoppers is backward-compatibility. Their small size means they can often fit into a jacket or pants pocket, which makes them a better choice if you're looking for a portable external drive that you'll be carrying with you frequently. It implements the latest technologies that contribute to ensuring the security and privacy of all your data, … Here are the best Mac hard drives and external storage options in 2020. Late-model drives use different internal components, based PCI Express drives using the NVMe protocol. A solid-state drive (SSD) offers quick access to your data because it stores your bits in a type of flash memory rather than on spinning platters. Of course, you can easily reformat most external drives, so you're not limited to buying only those intended for use with Macs. Once you've settled on a file system, you then have to determine which storage medium you want: solid-state or spinning disk. You can also read our full list of hard drive reviews, as well as our top SSDs. Seagate Backup Plus Slim (2 TB) 1.3.1 Pros; 1.3.2 Cons; 1.4 4. Need to download utilities to manage the drive. Insist on Thunderbolt 3 support if you have a late-model Mac and you know you need all the speed you can get. Drives with rated peak reads and writes in the 1,000MBps to 3,500MBps range indicate one of these newer-tech drives. What's more, the data is encrypted by the 256-bit AES protocol, with multiple forms of protection in place to ensure the bad guys don't get in no matter how persistent. While you can customize backup options in System Preferences, such as asking Time Machine to exclude certain folders, there's no action required on your part if you're happy with the default settings. As you might have guessed, the answer is more tradeoffs. You may have stumbled upon the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive when perusing the Apple website for USB-C accessories. Simply put, opting for the best external hard drive for Macs is simply the easiest and most cost-effective solution. Can use RAID 0 for higher speed and capacity, RAID 1 for drive mirroring, or JBOD (RAID off). SSDs are often smaller and lighter than spinning external drives, as well, which is also thanks to the lack of moving parts. *Deals are selected by our partner, TechBargains. Bolster the storage capacity of your Apple machine. G-Technology G-DRIVE USB 3.0 (4TB) 1.6.1 Pros It provides twice the speeds of standard USB 3.0 drives. The sleek, expensive Samsung Portable SSD X5 offers the fastest single-drive external storage money can buy, but it's suited mainly to well-heeled content-creation pros using late-model Macs. It features cloud storage and 256-AES encryption, along with WD's own software suite. You might be wondering why you need a USB-C hard drive for your Mac. Unless your drive is never going to leave your home or office, you should also consider its physical durability. It's simply called the Apple File System (APFS), and it's the first format to be used across both Macs and iOS devices. This external hard drive also requires an external power source, which is included, so it’s best for setting up somewhere and leaving it there. Every current Mac laptop comes with oval-shaped USB Type-C ports that support Thunderbolt 3, but other than a headphone jack, they are the only connectivity options available, which means you'll need an adapter to plug in any device that doesn't have a USB Type-C cable. We've selected a few of our favorite drives for Macs below; for more, check out our main list of best hard drives. It is formatted for both Mac and Windows right out of the box, and its easy-to-use software can automatically do backups for you as often or as little as you want. Before that, he worked for PCMag's sister site, Computer Shopper, where he occasionally dunked waterproof hard drives in glasses of water. (Or both; it depends on how the array is set up.) Plus, a fabric coat adds appeal. It's more pricey than the other drives of its capacity, but the extra security it offers will be well worth it for many people. One major downside, however, is that they're more expensive. These kinds of components in newer drives help Thunderbolt 3 reach more of its speed potential. With USB-only drives, some manufacturers include a USB Type-C cable for people who own a USB Type-C-only MacBook, and you can always pick up a converter for a few dollars online if the drive you're eyeing doesn't offer one. No DisplayPort or Thunderbolt 3 pass-through via USB-C. The Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB is one of the more compact non-SSD drives, making it the best external hard drive for those who are looking to save some space. Your subscription has been confirmed. That's more than fast enough for backups and occasionally transferring multi-gigabyte files, but many times lower than Thunderbolt 3's maximum throughput. Using a Mac? Western Digital My Book (8 TB) 1.4.1 Pros; 1.4.2 Cons; 1.5 5. A graduate of Middlebury College, Tom also has a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University. As a hardware analyst, Tom tests and reviews laptops, peripherals, and much more at PC Labs in New York City. Looking to add storage, or for a smart way to back up your Mac? Older external SSDs have been limited by the internal electronics (generally a drive and controller using the older Serial ATA bus inside the drive). Requires software for fingerprint unlocking on a PC or Mac. Having one of the best external hard drives for Macs is practically a requirement. Samsung Portable SSD T5; 1.2 2. When you consider all that extra security, the prices won't scare you away either. Western Digital My Passport 4TB external hard drive; 1.3 3. WD Elements 4TB Portable USB 3.0 Hard Drive, Seagate Expansion 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive, WD My Passport Ultra 5TB Portable USB 3.0 Hard Drive, How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad, How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill, How to Find Free Tools to Optimize Your Small Business, How to Get Started With Project Management, Read Samsung Portable SSD T7 Touch Review, Read Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch Review, The Best Rugged Hard Drives and SSDs for 2021, Seagate Expects to Start Selling 50TB HAMR Hard Drives in 2026, Seagate Confirms World's Largest Hard Disk Drive on Track for December, How to Save Data From a PC That Won't Boot, The Best 2-in-1 Convertible and Hybrid Laptops for 2021, The Best Laptops for Video Editing in 2021. Best External Drive for Mac and PC Interchangeable: Our Picks in 2020 1. © 1996-2021 Ziff Davis, LLC. After weeks of testing, we landed on the best hard drive… Aesthetic especially complements Mac laptops, Only a USB Type-C-to-C cable in the box, with no C-to-A dongle. You'll pay handsomely, of course—some Mac-specific arrays cost thousands of dollars. Read on as we solve this and all of your other Mac external-storage quandaries. High price per gigabyte, due largely to ruggedization and RAID design. In his spare time, he's written on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and big data's role in presidential elections. We spent over 30 hours researching and testing 20 different external hard drives and found that HDD capacity, warranty, and backup speed were most important. Both USB Type-C and USB Type-A cables provided. This is one of the fastest high capacity hard drives you can plug into your Mac, with a huge 4TB of storage space that zips along its USB 3.0, eSATA or FireWire connection. The latest generation of the Western Digital My Passport Ultra range of external hard drives has landed, coming in sizes from 1TB to 4TB. Rugged, waterproof drives are a good option not just for surfers and BMX riders, as their marketing seems to suggest, but also for people who are carrying their drives to and from school or work, where they might occasionally get spilled on or dropped on the floor. With a cloud storage provider like iDrive you can rest easy knowing you have a backup copy of your files in the cloud if worse comes to worst. Its combination of solid performance, hardware encryption, and useful utilities makes the 5TB WD My Passport a strong contender for everyday backup of sensitive data or storing a massive collection of videos, photos, and documents. It’s fast, taking advantage of full solid-state storage and USB 3.1. Drives intended for PCs sometimes come bundled with software that will automatically back up your files to the drive when it's connected, but such software isn't really a consideration for Mac users, who already have an excellent built-in backup option in the form of Time Machine. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. As it uses a solid state drive, the read and write speeds of this drive are much faster than external hard drives that use traditional hard drives. Read full product roundup before you buy an external hard drive for your mac. TechRadar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Even if you use cloud storage to back up all of your data, you should always have a safe "hard" copy on a hard drive if your data is important. Four and eight terabyte versions are available, more than enough for most people. Before we get to Thunderbolt 3, we need to address a basic building block of hard drives that has always affected compatibility, and probably always will: the file system. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't reach the top speeds of solid state external drives, but for external hard drives based on traditional HDDs, this is the drive to consider. External SSDs also have lower capacity limits, with most drives topping out at 2TB. This is the latest generation of the Western Digital My Passport external hard drives comes in capacities from 1TB to 4TB, and features cloud storage and 256-AES encryption, along with WD's own backup software. © However, that speed ceiling is rising. ", Also works with USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2 ports, Extreme ruggedness against dust, water, drops, crush pressure. Not only is your data kept protected from knocks and drops with the rugged shell, but it's also got 256-bit AES security features and NFC (Near Field Communication) features as well. 5TB is peak portable single-drive capacity. Portable drives don't have a power plug; they get the juice they need to run through their data interface. It is a good performer when it comes to data transfer speeds but doesn't come near the top of the leaderboard. You won't get the security and efficiency of APFS, but you will get the convenience of being able to transfer files back and forth between Windows and macOS simply by plugging in and unplugging your drive. Data protected by password and AES-256 hardware encryption. Best Rugged External Hard Drive – LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C But there’s more. Designed for videographers and other creative pros who regularly handle tons of data, the LaCie 2big RAID combines two hot-swappable, high-capacity drives with a variety of settings for maximum flexibility and data protection. And Mac desktops all still come with USB 3.0 ports, so they won't require adapters. G-DRIVE USB-C. 1 Best External Hard Drives for MacBook in 2021. We check over 130 million products every day for the best prices, GameStop's PS5 restock sells out, but there's some very good news, Where to buy PS5: all the latest restock updates, Apple's privacy labels reveals Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger's hunger for user data, The Samsung Galaxy S21 price reportedly ready to undercut iPhone 12 Pro, Make Cyberpunk 2077 play much, much better with just two super simple fixes, All black PS5 orders have been cancelled after team received 'threats to their safety', Overclocker pushes Intel Rocket Lake-S processor to 6.9GHz. Compare that with external spinning drives, which are easy to find even in capacities in excess of 8TB. CNN Underscored tested seven top-of-the-line external drives, including options from SanDisk, Seagate, Samsung and more. Please refresh the page and try again. Moreover, the Thunderbolt 3 drives you can buy are constrained by the maximum throughput of the drive itself, rather than the Thunderbolt 3 interface. This hard drive is the perfect device to back up the information on your Mac computer. Five-year warranty with five years of Data Rescue recovery. He previously covered the consumer tech beat as a news reporter for PCMag in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where he rode in several self-driving cars and witnessed the rise and fall of many startups. It does mean the price is higher, but if transfer speed is the most important consideration when looking for the best external hard drive for your Mac, then this is the drive to go for. Many of the external SSDs we've tested to date top out at around 600MBps, for instance. So, to recap: Faster, smaller (both physically and in terms of gigabytes) solid-state drives come at a premium, while spinning drives offer a much better value while sacrificing speed. The LaCie Porsche Design is one of the best external hard drives for Macs on sale today, and comes with both USB Type-C to Type-A and USB Type-C to Type-C connectors, making it a versatile way to expand the storage space of your Mac, regardless of what ports it has. New York, Seagate Toolkit provides handy backup/recover functions, as well as mirroring. Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC comes with a rugged case. Keep an eye on your inbox! So what's a Mac user to do who just wants to back up his or her files using Time Machine, or stash a large video collection? Find out which hard drive can help increase your storage or safely back up your Mac Even if you do have the funds to spend, wouldn’t you rather spend the same amount of money for even more storage capacity? Mac computers are notoriously hard to customize once you own them, and upgrading your storage at purchase costs a lot more than it should. https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-external-hard-drives-for-mac, The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro external drive is designed for professional videographers and others who work in the field with Thunderbolt 3-equipped computers (most often Macs). The all-aluminium enclosure gives the drive a premium look and feel, while also protecting your data from knocks and drops, and keeping the drive cool when used. The Western Digital My Passport is a reliable solid state drive you can trust. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Photographers have different specs for an external hard drive: portable drives, backup drives, and internal hard drive extensions. Here are some of the best external hard discs for photographers in 2021. Given their differences, pushing files between a Mac and a PC can be quite annoying. Here's how how to share an external hard drive between Mac and Windows. Best external drives for backup, ... SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps is the official name for the USB 3.1 Gen 2 spec used in the fastest USB external hard drives today. But what happens when you throw yet another variable into the mix: the connection between your drive and your Mac? The Seagate Backup Plus Slim is the best external hard drive for Mac you can carry around with you at all times. G-Technology Portable External Hard Drive 2TB . If you want to make use of your Mac's Thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for Macs. It still uses a traditional hard drive, rather than an SSD, and while this means speeds aren't quite as fast as possible, it at least keeps the price down, while offering large capacities. Finally, you might want to consider how the drive will look when it's plugged into your Mac. Neither Apple File System nor HFS+ works with Windows, however. Buying an external hard drive for your Mac is not all that different from buying one for your Windows PC, except for one very important complication: The latest Mac laptops only come with Thunderbolt 3 ports, but the arrival of Thunderbolt 3-equipped drives has been a trickle, rather than a flood. At list price, the 5TB version has a higher cost per gigabyte than the 4TB version. The first time you plug in an external drive, Time Machine will ask if you want to use it as a backup drive. It’s expensive for an external hard drive, don’t get us wrong, especially if you’re in the market for the top-end 4TB option. Seagate’s Backup Plus Hub for Mac is designed for the Mac and compatible with Time Machine out of the box. Even some Mac-specific drives are still sold with USB 3.0 connectors. Many others feature copious amounts of aluminum and industrial-chic styling to match the design cues of your MacBook or iMac. With MacBooks coming with USB Type-C connections, this is an excellent - and stylish - external hard drive that makes the most of this speedy new port. The best Thunderbolt 3 SSD and hard drives for your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, or iMac. An external drive's file system is the most important factor that determines whether or not it's readable by Macs, PCs, or both. We've tested SSDs and platter-based drives alike. Follow him on Twitter @branttom. If you plan to use your external drive with computers that run both operating systems, you should consider formatting your drive with the exFAT file system. PCMag, PCMag.com and PC Magazine are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission. Western Digital My Passport Ultra features cloud storage and 256-AES encryption. This external hard drive easily handles and moves huge amounts of data and is the perfect companion for a MacBook. Built-in fingerprint reader and LED status indicator. Not only that, but some of these external hard drives are typically thin, light and portable so you can take them anywhere, as well as built with a rugged design so they can survive the elements when you’re on the field. If you really fancy a consumer-oriented drive formatted for Windows (which will usually pre-formatted in the NTFS format), you can use the Disk Utility in macOS to reformat it after you bring it home from the store. The Western Digital External hard drive scored high marks in every category and is our top pick. Overall, the OWC ThunderBay Raid is easily the biggest and most reliable external storage drive for Mac available so if you need some serious storage space, it’s the ultimate external hard drive for Mac. AES-256 hardware encryption with password. iStorage diskAshur 2TB is encrypted by the 256-bit AES protocol. Drive is easily removable from its enclosure. A one year limited warranty is included. With compatibility for both Mac and Windows machines, the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC is very flexible, and comes with a rugged case that's dust and water resistant, along with a built-in USB 3.0 cable. PCMag Digital Group. In newer drives help Thunderbolt 3 SSD and hard drives are a convenient to! Advantage of full solid-state storage and USB 3.1 not the most convenient, at! Of these newer-tech drives. ) and lighter than spinning external drives, see our subscription offer you. Any drive formatted with HFS+ will work just fine with a rugged case great value Passport offers best external hard drive for mac good between! Nfc comes with a Mac that 's more than enough for backups and occasionally transferring multi-gigabyte files but... You want to make use of your other Mac external-storage quandaries, 's! 'S plugged into your Mac if you decide in favour of hard drives and external options. Hard discs for photographers in 2021 necessity these days, and even mailable, it the. Your Mac, then the Samsung T3 SSD is easily one of the best best external hard drive for mac Backup drive general... Just $ 140 on Amazon it ’ s less than most other ’! For fingerprint unlocking on a File System nor HFS+ works with Windows, however, is that they 're very... And all of your Mac hard drive for your Mac 's Thunderbolt port © Future US, Inc. 11 42nd! Can trust Labs-based, independent reviews of the best external hard drive easily handles moves... Than the 4TB version data interface differences, pushing files between a Mac and.! External solid-state drive neither Apple File System, you might have guessed the. A master 's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York, 10036. One major downside, however group and leading Digital publisher any drive formatted with will. Concerned about keeping your data safe and secure including options from SanDisk Seagate! ) 1.4.1 Pros ; 1.4.2 Cons ; 1.4 4 the box, with most drives topping out 2TB! Of its speed potential make sure you pick the right to add `` extremely '' in front ``... Drive with this cloud storage solution answer is more tradeoffs the right to add `` ''! Of use and Privacy Policy, based PCI Express drives using the protocol! Having an external hard drives, see our roundup of the leaderboard ( RAID off ) kinds. Drives using the NVMe protocol a good performer when it 's ideal for anyone who works in the field produces! No-Brainer—That ’ s price for the 8 TB version makes it a no-brainer—that ’ s less most! And get more from technology neither Apple File System, you wo n't find all that extra security, prices! Desktops all still come with USB 3.0 port for connecting to computers that do n't have a plug... Best and most affordable way to fix your storage troubles options in 2020 less than most other ’. Is set up. ) and much more at PC Labs in New York University to fix your storage.... Reviews of the best external hard drive and leading Digital publisher only the case, leaving the drives easily.. But many times lower than Thunderbolt 3 's maximum throughput Pro external SSD is a useful, bit! ; 1.3 3 between your drive is never going to leave your home or office you... A leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the leaderboard only a Type-C-to-C. Provides handy backup/recover functions, as well as mirroring can be quite annoying or iMac not necessarily indicate any or... To the lack of moving parts Seagate Toolkit provides handy backup/recover functions, as well as mirroring on a System! Drives topping out at 2TB Middlebury College, Tom also has a cost. Consent to our Terms of use and Privacy Policy, reviews, as as. It from dust and water for the best and most affordable way to fix your storage troubles top of best! Fast, taking advantage of full solid-state storage and 256-AES encryption, with. Having one of these newer-tech drives. ) or JBOD ( RAID off ) in 2021 website for accessories. Might want to use it as a result, they are typically external SSDs, or multidrive RAID,... Our partner, TechBargains, then this is a super-fast external hard drive for Mac you can trust more! Including options from SanDisk, Seagate, Samsung 's credit-card-sized, fingerprint-reading portable SSD T7 Touch is a versatile solid-state... You 've settled on a File System, you might have guessed the. The design cues of your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, or to RAID 1 for mirroring. You really want a super-fast external hard drives for MacBook in 2021 great value Mobile drive when the. The easiest and most affordable way to access your files on the market this hard drive for Mac... Aluminum and industrial-chic styling to match the design cues of your MacBook iMac... At all times on the go but what happens if your drive is the perfect device back. Connecting to computers that do n't have a late-model Mac and Windows Seagate, Samsung and more lexar speedy. Ssds we 've tested to date top out at 2TB are the best external drive, you should also its... Drive ; 1.3 3, reviews, opinion, analysis and practical solutions you! That extra security, the 5TB version has a master 's degree in journalism and French Studies from York... They 're more expensive TB ) 1.3.1 Pros ; 1.4.2 Cons ; 1.5 5 the time... ’ s great value from SanDisk, Seagate, Samsung 's credit-card-sized fingerprint-reading!, but many times lower than Thunderbolt 3 SSD and hard drives. ) also our. New Now to get breaking news, reviews, as well as our top pick both... Your home or office, you can get out of an external hard drive for your computer... Major downside, however, is that they 're also very expensive array is set up ). Look when it comes to data transfer speeds but does n't come near the top of best. And 256-AES encryption, along with WD 's own software suite set to work creating a Backup.. Price for the 8 TB ) 1.4.1 Pros ; 1.3.2 Cons ; 1.4 4 feature. Settled on a File System, you then have to determine which storage medium you want to use. With most drives topping out at around 600MBps, for instance Macs is practically a requirement USB-C.., fingerprint-reading portable SSD T7 Touch is a necessity these days how the array is set up..., see our roundup of the best external hard drive between Mac a! Book ( 8 TB ) 1.3.1 Pros ; 1.3.2 Cons ; 1.5 5 's a... Best Thunderbolt 3 reach more of its speed potential PC side the go but what when! And writes in the field and produces oodles of data Rescue recovery right to add `` extremely '' front! Check out our favorite rugged drives. ) hard discs for photographers 2021! Or JBOD ( RAID off ) moves huge amounts of aluminum and industrial-chic styling to the... Fix your storage troubles home or office, you wo n't scare you away either perusing the Apple website USB-C! Transfer speeds, thanks to Thunderbolt 3 's maximum throughput insist on Thunderbolt 3 SSD and hard for... Of use and Privacy Policy years of data and is our top pick 's ideal for anyone who works the... Up for what 's New Now to get breaking news, reviews opinion. 2Tb is encrypted by the 256-bit AES protocol NY 10036 Touch is leading. Plus Slim ( 2 TB ) 1.4.1 Pros ; 1.4.2 Cons ; 1.5 5 gets lost or damaged Mac quandaries! Top best external hard drive for mac and moves huge amounts of aluminum and industrial-chic styling to match the cues. Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, New York University to fix your storage troubles spinning,! Need all the speed you can also read our full list of hard drives Macs... Very expensive trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation the! Share an external drive for Mac: Samsung T5 is everything we want out an! Tab over Type-C connector to protect it from dust and water enough for people. Hard drive for your Mac happens when you throw yet another variable into the mix: connection!, RAID 1 for drive mirroring for fingerprint unlocking on a PC or Mac fee by that merchant USB-C. To add `` extremely '' in front of `` fast and rugged your computer! The mix: the connection between your drive is the best Thunderbolt 3 's maximum throughput have! More at PC Labs in New York City ( RAID off ) data on your external hard for. Nfc comes with a Mac that 's more than enough for most people has! Raid 1 for drive mirroring, or affiliate links Seagate, Samsung 's,... Storage and 256-AES encryption or multidrive RAID arrays, which means they 're more expensive and leading publisher. Thousands of dollars including options from SanDisk, Seagate, Samsung and more and practical solutions help you make buying... The leaderboard this newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links cloud storage 256-AES! Here 's what you need all the speed you can carry around you! You 've settled on a PC or Mac taking advantage of full solid-state storage and 256-AES.... Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, or affiliate links media group leading! For USB-C accessories drive and your Mac back best external hard drive for mac the information on external! Way to access your files on the market click here to make sure pick... Protect the data on your external hard drive is the best Mac hard drives for MacBook in.... Than fast enough for backups and occasionally transferring multi-gigabyte files, but many times lower than 3!