pc mag best external hard drives for mac

It probably won’t surprise you to learn the price goes up with how much storage a drive has. Storage: How much storage do you really need in an external drive? 500GB? 1TB? 5TB? 36TB? There are drives on this list that can offer all of those capacities and more.Different sizes have different use cases, basically, so you’ll want to consider how the drive’s size affects what you want to do with it. Some are, sure, but others are so large you’ll barely ever remove them from your desk. Size: External drives are extremely popular for their portability, but that doesn’t mean every drive is pocket-sized.Just because it’s an SSD doesn’t mean it will be a particularly fast one, so we’ll make sure to let you know the speeds of all the drives on this list. Speed: To go along with the previous section, just getting an SSD isn’t enough: You’ll also want to keep an eye on the read and write speeds (which is how fast the drive can retrieve data from a device and send it back, respectively).Both types of SSDs are more expensive than HDDs for their increased speed, but there are other benefits-for example, HDDs can make a small amount of noise due to the spinning disc, while SSDs are quiet.

SSDs have no moving parts and can transfer data much quicker, and NVMe’s even more so. HDDs use physical, analog discs to read and write data and are the slowest of the lot for it, but they’re also significantly more affordable. ✓ Extremely durable against impacts, dust, and waterĭrive Type: There are three main types of hard drives to pick from: Hard Disk Drives (or HDDs), Solid-State Drives (or SSDs), and Non-Volatile Memory Express SSDs (or NVMes for short). The LaCrie Rugged drives protect against both physical and digital threats excellently.įor Mac users, this Thunderbolt 3 drive delivers blistering fast speeds and premium build quality. If you need a lot of storage, then the My Book is happy to comply. This HDD may be slower than its SSD counterparts, but it's much more affordable. Fast NVMe speeds with a durable, portable design.Ī drive small enough to fit on a keychain while still providing the specs of larger drives.

Pc mag best external hard drives for mac