Back up your entire life with the best external hard drives

If you run If you’re running out of storage space on your laptop or need to back up your data and store the backlog of videos you’re going to edit one day (I am, I swear), an external hard drive can solve your problem. The problem is that there are hundreds of drive options ranging from very cheap to very expensive. Which one best suits your needs? I’ve tested dozens, across all 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 much more.

Check out our other guides, including How to backup and move your photos between services, How to Back Up Your Digital LifeAnd How to backup your iPhone.

Updated January 2026: We’ve added Seagate’s One Touch SSD, replaced our filler drive choice, and removed the Crucial X6, which, unfortunately, has been discontinued. We’ve also added a note explaining the rebranding of WD_Black and WD Blue drives to SeaGate Optimus GX, along with updated pricing and links.

Ideal for backups

For incremental backups, that we recommendspeed is not an important factor. That’s why the first drive I recommend is this Western Digital Elements hard drive. I’ve been using a variation of the Elements desktop hard drive to perform incremental backups of my data for over a decade. These drives are large and require an external power supply, but they are some of the cheapest and most reliable drives I have used.

Transfer speeds aren’t off the charts (the Elements drive I tested hit 120 megabytes per second (MB/s) for sequential writes on Windows), but again, you should ideally be doing backups overnight, and even at these speeds the average PC backup will be done in the morning. These drives use USB-C with support for USB 3 and I’ve had no issues using them with Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Storage options go up to 20 terabytes. Just check the prices; Sometimes you can get a 10 or even 12 TB drive for little more than the 8 terabyte version. And I didn’t see a big difference between the Elements range, the WD My book readers, or the WD My Passport drives. The My Passport drives cost more because they are smaller and the My Book drives have encryption features that drive up the price, but I find the basic Elements drive to be enough for most people.

Other Great Backup Drives

• Seagate Expansion 8TB External Hard Drive for $159: Seagate is another reliable drive manufacturer. It never hurts to have more backups, and if you want multiple backups, use different brand disks, as this will reduce the risk of both failing simultaneously.

Ideal for portable backups

If you travel a lot, you’ll need something easier to carry than the Elements discs, which aren’t the best in a suitcase. For travel backups, 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 sturdy enough that I was never afraid to throw it in my bag. (Although it should be said that this is a rotary drive, don’t literally throw it away.) I also like that the corners are nicely rounded and that there are no screws or anything else that can snag the fabric in your bag.

There are a variety of colors available and you can get from 1TB to 6TB. I tested the 5TB 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 get 121 MB/s read speed and 115 MB/s write speed. Not what you’d want to quickly copy photos for a client in the field, but fast enough to make a daily backup in your hotel room.

Other portable backup drives

• Western Digital Elements 5TB Portable Hard Drive for $135: This disc is slightly thinner than our top pick, but feels more fragile in my experience. Speeds are also a bit slower, but if you’re on a budget this will save you a bit of money. Corsair markets it as a good way to save ProRes footage from your iPhone, and while it certainly works for that, performance is limited by the iPhone’s USB-C interface. For maximum throughput, connect it to a PC with a USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 port.
• Seagate One Touch 4TB for $125: Seagate’s One Touch Drive offers some encryption tools, but the speeds lag a bit behind our top pick. Still, it’s a solid option for backups and is surprisingly small for a spinning drive enclosure. Also note that this disc is sometimes sold with four months of Adobe Creative Cloud (about $40 value), but if you use it, be sure to cancel because after those four months you will be charged.

Best USB5 drive: Thunderbolt 5

LaCie has updated its rugged SSD lineup with the Rugged Pro5. This one ditches the iconic orange padding for blue, but it otherwise resembles regular LaCie padded drives on the outside. Inside, it’s an incredibly fast drive. The 5 in the name is for, you guessed it, Thunderbolt 5, which although announced apparently there is alwaystook a long time to reach the market. This made testing a bit tricky, but luckily a friend let me borrow his brand new MacBook Pro 14 to test them out. The results were impressive.

LaCie claims read/write speeds of up to 6,700 MB/s and 5,300 MB/s, which it says is sufficient for real-time editing of 8K and 6K RAW footage. When 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 by far the fastest drive on the page. But raw speeds are just numbers for spreadsheets; I was more interested in real world performance. As I also tested the Nikon Z6III (8/10, WIRED recommends)which can shoot 6K ProRes RAW, I loaded a lot of the footage onto the Pro5 and was actually able to edit it using DaVinci Resolve Studio.

The downside here is the price. At $600 for the 4TB version (which is the minimum you want for working with ProRes RAW video files), this is a very expensive drive. However, it’s worth it if you’re looking for speed.

Best USB4 drive

If you don’t already have a device that supports Thunderbolt 5, this Thunderbolt 4 drive would be my recommendation for anyone obsessed with speed. Corsair’s EX400U is an impressive little drive, consistently delivering speeds of around 3,800 MB/s sequential read and 3,550 MB/s write. Again, this will only be possible if you have a device that supports USB4/Thunderbolt 4 (including recent Macbooks, Dell XPS and others – check out our guide to the best laptops to learn more). Technically, just as I was finishing this update, Lacie’s new rugged SSD came out, beating that drive in my testing by about 10MB/s, but that drive is smaller, lighter, and less expensive.

I also like that Corsair has included a Magsafe connector on the back of the case, which is a great option for saving ProRes video footage from your iPhone.

Ideal for photographers

Crucial’s X9 Pro strikes the right balance of speed, portability, and price to be one of the best drives available for photographers looking to make backups in the field. These discs are tiny, about half the size of a deck of cards and weighing just 1.3 ounces (38 grams). They will connect to almost anything. I tested the X9 Pro on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS and never had a problem with any of them. When it comes to speed, the This puts the X9 Pro ahead of the pack in portable drive speed.

I’ve been testing the X9 Pro for several months now, and while I can’t speak to the long-term survival rate yet, I’ve been testing Crucial’s X6 and There is also the X10 Pro Reader ($235)which offers even faster speeds if you have a PC that supports USB 2X2. (Intel’s latest chips support this spec, but Apple doesn’t, so there’s no point buying the If your hardware supports it, the X10 Pro is worth the extra money.

Best small reader

Seagate’s new Ultra Compact SSD straddles the line between USB key and traditional external drive. The size, design, and built-in USB-C connector make it a flash drive, but the drive inside is much faster, delivering 1,000 MB/s throughput over USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps). In my CrystalDiskMark test, it managed 1034 MB/s and a write speed of 1018 MB/s, which, while not as fast as some of the new Thunderbolt 5 drives hitting the market, is still significantly faster than most USB drives. In some ways, performance-wise, it’s a more compact, lower-end version of the X9 drive above (LaCie is Seagate’s high-end, Mac-focused brand). You get a little less performance for your money, but the compact, cable-free form factor might be worth it for some people.

My only complaint with this drive is that it’s rather wide for a USB drive, which means that if your laptop has USB-C ports close together, it can cover two of them. You can mitigate this problem by ditching the rubber casing, but then you lose some of the protection (the cased drive is designed to withstand drops from 3 meters and is IP54 rated for dust and water resistance). It comes in and is also frequently out of stock. Seagate’s Ultra Compact SSD is one of several SSDs adopting the USB flash drive form factor. We also tested and appreciated the SK Hynix Tube 31which is presented in our guide to Best USB Flash Drives.

Other great small disks

• Kingston XS1000 2TB for $203: This tiny reader is one of the smallest in this guide. Like the Crucial X6, its body is mostly plastic, but it held up to life in my bag quite well. While it’s not as sturdy as the padded options below, it’s sturdy enough for most things. It’s also fast. Kingston claims up to 1050MB/s. I never achieved this, but I regularly hit around 800MB/s, with some older laptops closer to 600MB/s, which is still pretty good. The player bogs down a bit with large files (MP4, for example), so it’s not the best for professional videographers, but for everyone else it’s a solid and slightly cheaper option.

Best ride anywhere

If you need a drive that can withstand life in a backpack Or camera baggetting wet or handling a drop on hard surfaces, OWC discs are your best choice. It’s hard to pick a winner here because there are many solid options, but OWC’s Elektron drive narrowly beat the others in benchmark testing. I also like that you can swap the drive inside the aluminum case (it’s easy to unscrew), meaning that in two years you can grab a faster bare SSD and drop it into the rugged Elektron case.

Other Rugged SSDs

• Sabrent Rocket Nano 1TB SSD for $170: I really like this one. It is smaller and slightly faster than OWC, but it has two disadvantages. The first is that it can be hot. If you try to work with it on your lap, it can be downright uncomfortable. The other problem is that my PC sometimes takes a while to recognize it. I found no pattern for this; sometimes s, it would appear immediately, and other times it would take a few minutes. If these things don’t bother you, this drive is small, less expensive, and includes a padded rubber case.

Best padded disc

Samsung’s T9 has been my favorite portable drive for a few years now. Although I like the LaCie drives (like the sturdy Pro5 above) that generally dominate this category, the Samsung is very fast. The 20Gbps T9 was able to take full advantage of this speed, reaching over 1,350MB/s, beating the Crucial X9 hands down. The T9 also seems to have lower power consumption, or at least when I plug it into my Android tablet it drains the battery much less than any other player I use regularly.

The T9’s padding is less than that offered by LaCie drives, but it’s also considerably less expensive and makes life on the road much easier. The only problem is that it is neither waterproof nor dustproof. The padding stops at the ends, so it is not completely sealed. I haven’t had any problems, but if you get it wet it will be a problem. If this worries you, check out the T7 shield below.

Another great padded option

• Samsung T7 Shield 2TB SSD for $235: This is very similar to the above, but it adds a IP65 ratingwhich means it’s nice in the rain and protected from dust and sand. The T7 range stands out for its built-in security features such as hardware encryption, but unlike the Touch modelthe Shield does not have a fingerprint reader.

Best game player

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 has some cool RGB lights on the bottom if that’s your jam. In my testing, this doesn’t seem to have any impact on power consumption.

As for speed, my tests were inconsistent. This drive is capable of reaching speeds that easily beat the Envoy Pro and Samsung T7, but at other times it seemed to bog down (at least in benchmarks). In the real world, the bottleneck I constantly encountered was some delay in transferring huge amounts of data. This might be a deal breaker for some, but for the price it’s still a solid choice.

Best bare disc

If you want to install a larger SSD in your laptop, all you need is a bare drive, which is generally less expensive than the encased drives listed above. The first thing to determine is which drive your PC uses. Check your manufacturer’s documentation to find out. These days, the most common form factor is the 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 which drive it needs before purchasing. Among the dozens I tried, Western Digital’s WD Black series stood out for its speed and it doesn’t get very hot.

The SN 990 PRO SSD NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4 achieved read speeds of 7,458 MB/s in my testing, more or less matching the claimed read/write speeds of 7,450 MB/6,900 MB. If you do a lot of disk-intensive tasks, like video editing or gaming, this drive is definitely worth it. The largest version you can get is 4TB, and the price is reasonable considering the speed. There are faster drives out there, but you’ll pay for them and I find that currently beyond this drive there is a diminishing return in the speed/price curve. I’ve been using this as my primary drive for several months now and it works great for editing 5.2K video footage and compiling software. My favorite part? It generates very little heat.

Other options

• Western Digital SN850X 1TB SSD for $245: Another fast drive, Western Digital claims read speeds of up to 7,300 MB/s, and in benchmark testing, this drive’s results come close. Like the Samsung above, to take full advantage of the speed here you’ll need a system that supports the PCIe 4.0 SSD standard, but it’s a great drive if you want to upgrade a gaming system, whether it’s a desktop or your PlayStation. This player is also one of the few I have seen that is available until 8TB capacity.
• Samsung 990 Evo Plus 2TB for $273: The 990 EVO Plus is an upgrade to the very popular 990 EVO. The original didn’t offer anything compelling and never made this guide, but the new version manages to be incredibly fast and not too hot, as many PCIe Gen 5 drives I’ve tested have been. The 990 EVO Plus also launched with a 4TB model, which was missing the first time around. In terms of speed, it doesn’t quite match the SN850X above, reaching 5,677MB/s read, but it’s very fast for most uses and remains pretty cool even when pushed. If you’re looking for a good all-around drive that still looks cool, this is a good choice, even if it’s expensive for what you get.

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