If you're running out of storage space on your laptop, or if you need to back up your data and store that backlog of videos you're going to edit one day (I am, I swear), an external hard drive can solve your problem. The trouble is, there are hundreds of drive options ranging from dirt cheap to crazy expensive—which one is right for your needs? I've tested dozens, across operating systems and with different use cases in mind, to find the best external hard drives for storage, backups, gaming, video editing, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, and more.
Check out our other guides, including 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 February 2025: We've added the Western Digital My Passport Ultra, LaCie's Rugged Pro5, and the Samsung EVO 990 bare drive. We've also updated prices and links throughout.
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Best for Backups
For incremental backups, which we recommend, speed isn't a huge factor. That's why the first drive I recommend is this Western Digital Elements hard drive. I have been using a variation of the Elements desktop hard drive to make incremental backups of my data for more than a decade now. These drives are big and require external power, but they're some of the cheapest, most reliable drives I've used.
Transfer speeds are not off the charts—the Elements drive I tested scored 120 megabytes per second (MB/s) for sequential writes on Windows—but again, you should ideally be running backups overnight anyway, and even at these speeds the average PC backup will be done by morning. These drives use USB-C with support for USB 3, and I've had no problem using them with Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Storage options go all the way up to 20 terabytes. Just check the prices; sometimes you can get a 10- or even 12-TB drive for not much more than the 8-terabyte version. And I have not seen a huge difference between the Elements line, the WD My Book drives, or the WD My Passport drives. The My Passport drives command a premium price because they're smaller, and the My Book drives have some encryption features that drive up the price, but I find the basic Elements drive is sufficient for most people.
Best for Portable Backups
If you travel a lot, you'll want something that's easier to carry than the Elements drives, which aren't the best in a suitcase. For backups when traveling, I love Western Digital's My Passport series, especially the new “Ultra” version, which uses a standard USB-C cord, eliminating the need to carry a separate cable. It's not the thinnest drive on the market, but it's less than an inch thick and solid enough that I never worried about tossing it in my bag. (Although it should be said that this is a spinning drive, so don't literally toss it.) I also like that the corners are nicely rounded and there are no screws or anything else that will catch on fabric in your bag.
There are a variety of colors available and you can get from 1 TB to 6 TB. I tested the 5-TB model, but Western Digital claims the same speeds regardless of drive size. I tested it using CrystalDiskMark on Windows, AmorphousDiskMark on macOS, and KDiskMark on Linux and averaged the results to come up with 121 MB/s for read speed and 115 MB/s write speed. It's not what you'd want to copy photos quickly for a client in the field, but fast enough to run a daily backup in your hotel room.
The Best Drive for When Speed Is Everything
LaCie has updated its rugged SSD line with the Rugged Pro5. This one ditches the iconic orange padding for blue, but it is otherwise just like the ordinary LaCie padded drives on the outside. On the inside, this is an amazingly fast drive. The 5 in the name is for, you guessed it, Thunderbolt 5, which despite being announced seemingly forever ago, has been painfully slow to trickle onto the market. This made testing a bit tricky, but fortunately a friend let me borrow his brand-new MacBook Pro 14 for testing. And the results were impressive.
LaCie claims read/write speeds of up to 6,700 MB/s and 5,300 MB/s, which it says are enough for real-time editing of 8K and 6K RAW footage. In testing the highest speeds, file transfers were 5,787 MB/s read and 5,188 MB/s write—which, while not quite matching the claim, is still far and away the fastest drive on the page. But raw speeds are just numbers for spreadsheets; I was more interested in real-world performance. Since I happened to also be testing the Nikon Z6III (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which can shoot 6K ProRes RAW, I loaded a good bit of footage on the Pro5 and was indeed able to edit using DaVinci Resolve Studio.
The downside here is the price. At $600 for the 4-TB version (which is the minimum you'd want for working with ProRes RAW video files), this is a very pricey drive. It is however, well worth the money if it's speed you're after.
Best Budget Portable SSD
These Crucial drives are my favorite general-purpose external storage drives. They're reasonably priced (for a portable SSD) and speedy enough for most uses. The X6 is lightweight and tiny, making it a good choice for working at the coffee shop.
This isn't a blinding-fast hard disk. In fact, under the hood, the X6 uses an older drive interface (Serial AT Attachment, or SATA), which was more common with spinning hard drives. So while it's small and light, its speed is limited by that older interface technology. In my testing on Windows and macOS, that works out to about 550 MB/s read speed and 208 MB/s write speed. That's good enough for backup and use as an external drive, but I don't recommend it for Xbox or PlayStation use. It does work fine with the iPad Pro though.
The major downside is the plastic construction—it’s a portable hard drive, not an indestructible hard drive. If you're worried about it breaking in your bag, grab a padded case. There are plenty out there, like this one. The Crucial X9 (below) is a step up from the X6, both in terms of build quality (it's metal to the X6's plastic) and speed, but the X9 is considerably more expensive.
Best for Photographers
Crucial's X9 Pro hits the sweet spot of speed, portability, and price to be one of the best drives out there for photographers looking to make backups in the field. These drives are tiny, about half the size of a deck of cards, and weigh a mere 1.3 ounces (38 grams). They'll connect to just about anything. I tested the X9 Pro on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS and never hit any issues with any of them. When it comes to speed, the X9 Pro claims symmetrical read and write speeds, at 1,050 MB/s. I actually consistently got higher speeds, up to 1,110 MB/s for read and 1,100 MB/s for write. That puts the X9 Pro at the top of the pack in terms of portable drive speed.
I've been testing the X9 Pro for several months now, and while I can't yet speak to the long-term survival rate, I have been testing X6 and X8 drives from Crucial for over two years now without issue. There is also the X10 Pro drive ($180), which offers even faster speeds if you have a PC that supports USB 2X2. (The latest Intel chips support this spec, but Apple does not, so there's no point in buying the X10 Pro if you have a Mac.) I do not own a PC that supports USB 2X2 for extensive testing, but I did get a chance to at least try it, and the X10 Pro does indeed deliver on its promise of 2,100 MB/s (I got it up to 2,050 MB/s). If your hardware supports it, the X10 Pro is worth the extra money.
Best Go-Anywhere Drive
If you need a drive that can stand up to life in a backpack or camera bag, get wet, or handle a drop onto hard surfaces, OWC drives are your best choice. It's tough to pick a winner here because there are many solid options, but OWC's Elektron drive narrowly beat others in benchmark tests. I also like that you can swap out the drive inside the aluminum casing (it's easy to unscrew), which means two years from now, you can pick up a faster bare SSD and drop it in the hardy Elektron enclosure.
Best Padded Drive
The go-anywhere drives above are a solid solution for people who need to make backups in the field, like photographers and videographers. But if you want an extra level of comfort, this padded drive from LaCie has long been a favorite of travelers. LaCie makes both an SSD version and a traditional spinning drive version. If speed isn't an issue, as with making nightly backups, then the cheaper spinning drive makes more sense. If you're backing up in the middle of a photo shoot or similar situation where backing up needs to happen fast, the SSD version is what you want.
Best Gaming Drive
Take this category with a grain of salt. Most of the drives here will work just fine for gaming (just stick with the fastest you can afford). That said, Western Digital's new P40 does have some cool RGB lights on the bottom if that's your jam. In my testing, that didn't seem to impact power consumption.
As for speed, my tests were inconsistent. This drive is capable of speeds that handily beat both the Envoy Pro and Samsung T7, but at other times it seemed to bog down (at least in benchmarks). In real-world use, the bottleneck I consistently hit was some lag in transferring huge amounts of data. That might be a deal-breaker for some, but for the price, it remains a solid choice.
Best Bare Drive
If you want to put a bigger SSD in your laptop, all you need is a bare drive, which is generally cheaper than the drives with enclosures listed above. The first thing to figure out is which drive your PC uses. Consult your manufacturer's documentation to find out. In my experience, the most common form factor is M.2 2280, which is the long, thin drive in the image above. More compact laptops may use the similar, but shorter, M.2 2242 design. Again, check your PC to confirm the drive it needs before you buy. There are a ton of these on the market, and I haven't had time to test many yet, but so far, out of the half dozen I have tried, Western Digital's WD Black series has stood out for speed, and it doesn't run very hot.
The SN 770 M.2 2280 achieved speeds of 5,100 MB/s in my testing, which is blazing fast. If you're doing a lot of drive-intensive tasks, like editing video or gaming, this drive is well worth the money. The largest version you can get is 2 TB, but the price is reasonable considering the speed increase. I've been using it as my main drive for several months and found it fast enough for everything I do, including editing 5.2K video footage and compiling software. My favorite part? It generates very little heat. My older Dell XPS 13 used to get too hot to use without something between it and my lap. Now it doesn't get hot until I start trying to export video, but quickly cools off as soon as it's done.
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