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. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. 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. There's also a USB 3.0 port for connecting to computers that don't have a Thunderbolt port. Find out which hard drive can help increase your storage or safely back up your Mac 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. It features cloud storage and 256-AES encryption, along with WD's own software suite. This hard drive is the perfect device to back up the information on your Mac computer. Click here to make sure you pick the right hard drive for your needs. The Western Digital External hard drive scored high marks in every category and is our top pick. Requires software for fingerprint unlocking on a PC or Mac. On the other hand, this is an HDD that could theoretically output speeds of up to 5Gbps, if it weren’t hindered by the limits of SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology. 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? 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. Late-model drives use different internal components, based PCI Express drives using the NVMe protocol. Ships with apps for backup/restore, reformatting and checking drive health, and more. 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. You might be wondering why you need a USB-C hard drive for your Mac. 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. If you decide in favour of hard drives, see our roundup of the best Mac hard drives. And Mac desktops all still come with USB 3.0 ports, so they won't require adapters. Both USB Type-C and USB Type-A cables provided. 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. Drive is easily removable from its enclosure. One of the Best Gaming External Hard Drives For Mac Silicon Power Armor A60 The Silicon Power Armor A60 is a rugged and portable external hard drive that comes with 3 TB storage capacity, military-grade shock-proof body, cable carry design, USB 3.0 and is compatible with … 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. 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. Read on as we solve this and all of your other Mac external-storage quandaries. Offering excellent performance and easy-to-use security, Samsung's credit-card-sized, fingerprint-reading Portable SSD T7 Touch is a versatile external solid-state drive. That's more than fast enough for backups and occasionally transferring multi-gigabyte files, but many times lower than Thunderbolt 3's maximum throughput. Unfortunately, you won't find all that many Thunderbolt 3-compatible drives on the market. 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. If you want to make use of your Mac's Thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for Macs. 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. Plus, a fabric coat adds appeal. After weeks of testing, we landed on the best hard drive… (Check out our favorite rugged drives.). Apple airport time capsule is featured in it. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering Labs-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. You could pay more than 25 cents per gigabyte for an SSD, while spinning drives can be had for less than 10 cents per gigabyte—and often much less. This is a great external hard drive for your Mac if you are concerned about keeping your data safe and secure. TechRadar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Here's what you need to know, along with our top-rated Apple-friendly drives. The first time you plug in an external drive, Time Machine will ask if you want to use it as a backup drive. Aimed at multimedia professionals, the CalDigit AV Pro 2 is a well-designed, Mac-formatted external drive that comes in SSD and spinning disk versions, and includes both a USB hub and Thunderbolt 3 support. Samsung T3 SSD is a super-fast external hard drive for your Mac. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer. Five-year warranty with five years of Data Rescue recovery. This drive is preformatted just for you, offering a high transfer rate for fast file access and connects easily via USB-C. Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt. Protect the data on your external hard drive with this cloud storage solution. Seagate Toolkit provides handy backup/recover functions, as well as mirroring. A graduate of Middlebury College, Tom also has a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University. 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. Data protected by password and AES-256 hardware encryption. 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. As a result, they are typically external SSDs, or multidrive RAID arrays, which means they're also very expensive. 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. Having an external hard drive for your Mac is a necessity these days. It is a good performer when it comes to data transfer speeds but doesn't come near the top of the leaderboard. Samsung Portable SSD T5; 1.2 2. It's ideal for anyone who works in the field and produces oodles of data. Can set to RAID 0 for higher speed and capacity, or to RAID 1 for drive mirroring. Of course, you can easily reformat most external drives, so you're not limited to buying only those intended for use with Macs. The Western Digital My Passport is a reliable solid state drive you can trust. Finally, you might want to consider how the drive will look when it's plugged into your Mac. Amazon’s price for the 8 TB version makes it a no-brainer—that’s less than most other companies’ 4 TB drives. 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). 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. (Or both; it depends on how the array is set up.) 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. G-DRIVE USB-C. 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