Best portable external hard drive for mac

#Best portable external hard drive for mac password
#Best portable external hard drive for mac mac

Top external drives: our recommendationsД®xternal hard disk being connected to a laptop.

Also in the market for a new computer? Be sure to read our guide to the best budget laptops.ДЄll pricing in this article was correct at the time of publication. We will explain everything in this guide, and recommend some top external hard drives that will offer you a range of storage capacities and speeds. You will need to think about what ports are on your computer, how much space you actually need, how portable you require the external drive to be and whether it should be HDD or SSD. You donвЂ™t have to use these of course, but if youвЂ™re transferring something private and want to make sure if you lose the drive people canвЂ™t access it, then these are extremely useful.But an external hard drive is not just a place to toss some old photos вЂ“ it can be hugely helpful for larger backups вЂ“ giving you peace of mind that content is safe and wonвЂ™t be deleted or corrupted should your computer or laptop break.Д«ut hold on a second before simply buying the external hard drive with the most capacity вЂ“ thereвЂ™s a little more to it than that.

#Best portable external hard drive for mac password

Security:В Your data is important, so a drive offering simple password encryption and other security features is a major bonus.

Drives have to reserve a certain amount of space for formatting and other important processes-for example, a 1TB drive may only make 920~GB available to you. But something you should be aware of is that what it says on the store page isnвЂ™t necessarily how much storage youвЂ™ll have access to. It probably wonвЂ™t surprise you to learn the price goes up with how much storage a drive has.

Storage:В 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 youвЂ™ll want to consider how the driveвЂ™s size affects what you want to do with it. Some are, sure, but others are so large youвЂ™ll barely ever remove them from your desk. Size:В External drives are extremely popular for their portability, but that doesnвЂ™t mean every drive is pocket-sized.

Just because itвЂ™s an SSD doesnвЂ™t mean it will be a particularly fast one, so weвЂ™ll make sure to let you know the speeds of all the drives on this list.

Speed:В To go along with the previous section, just getting an SSD isnвЂ™t enough: YouвЂ™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 NVMeвЂ™s even more so. HDDs use physical, analog discs to read and write data and are the slowest of the lot for it, but theyвЂ™re also significantly more affordable. вњ“ Extremely durable against impacts, dust, and waterДrive Type:В There are three main types of hard drives to pick from: Hard Disk Drives (or HDDs), Solid-State Drives (or SSDs), andВ Non-Volatile Memory Express SSDs (or NVMes for short).

#Best portable external hard drive for mac mac

The LaCrie Rugged drives protect against both physical and digital threats excellently.ДЇor 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.ДЄ drive small enough to fit on a keychain while still providing the specs of larger drives.