Beyond sheer size, other factors such as the fastest hard drive and fastest SSD speed, as well as overall performance, play a critical role in our evaluation. Our guide also touches upon the best external hard drive and best portable SSD options available, ensuring that you find a balance between capacity, speed, and portability. Most such multi-bay devices are sold without the actual hard drives included, so you can install any drive you want (usually, 3.5-inch drives, but some support laptop-style 2.5-inchers). Their total storage capacities are limited only by their number of available bays and the capacities of the drives you put in them. The storage industry refers to these (as well as smaller-capacity externals as a whole) as DAS—for "direct attached storage"—to distinguish them from NAS, or network attached storage, many of which are also multi-bay devices that can take two or more drives that you supply. (See our separate roundup of the best NAS drives.)

Perhaps the only thing you don't need to pay all that much attention to is the warranty. Sounds counter-intuitive, perhaps? Sure, a long warranty is nice. But if your drive breaks because you dropped it, the warranty likely won't cover that, anyway. Even if the drive fails because of a manufacturing defect, most warranties simply replace the drive and don't cover the cost of recovery services that attempt to rescue your data from the broken drive. The real value lies in what's on your drive, not the drive itself. It's incredibly fast and reliable. The only difference between this and a more expensive drive is that you may not get all the ports, but this is a GREAT BUY if you don't need them. The LED lights at the front of the drive light up green for USB 2.0 and blue for USB 3.0 connection. Its wraparound USB cable -permanently attached at one end saves you from losing the cable but if you need a longer cable you'll have to use a male/female cable in between.Also: Don't confuse the system-side interface with the connector that joins the cable to the drive itself. On most newer portable SSDs, the connector at the SSD end is a USB Type-C port (the same as the kind you might find system-side)... (Credit: Zlata Ivleva) Still, while external SSDs are cheaper than they were a few years ago (see the best we've tested at the preceding link), they're far from a complete replacement for spinning drives. Larger external drives designed to stay on your desk or in a server closet still almost exclusively use spinning-drive mechanisms, taking advantage of platter drives' much higher capacities and much lower prices compared with SSDs. Cloud functionality, which allows individuals and businesses to operate a personal cloud. Essentially your very own cloud storage solution. Hard drives may get you more capacity for your dollar by far, but first you need to consider a major difference in external storage these days: the hard drive versus the SSD. The two biggest hard disk drive vendors have released 22TB hard drives with Western Digital unveiling a 26TB model in 2022 (although you won't be able to buy it as it is a data center only product). Toshiba has a 20TB CMR Hard disk drive but no plans for a 22TB one yet.

De werkelijke overdrachtssnelheden zijn afhankelijk van de gebruiksomgeving en andere factoren, zoals de gekozen interface en schijfcapaciteit. Also know that you can find external drives that do way more than just store your data. Some include SD card readers to offload footage from a camera or drone in the field, while a few specialized models have built-in Wi-Fi and can double as a little media server, able to connect to more than one device at a time.The SK Hynix Beetle is a drive to be seen with, a great conversation starter. The Beetle is small and light enough to be taken anywhere, and it offers some protection from tumbles. Its speed is comparable to other USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSDs we have reviewed. It’s priced a little higher per gigabyte than most external SSDs, but since its capacity maxes out at 1TB, you can still have this gem without it busting your budget. The best part about this hard drive is that it plugs and plays on Mac; if you ever need to reformat it for Windows, it will be a breeze. Featuring dual Thunderbolt 3 (20Gbps) ports and a single USB-connection(5Gbps) port, this MUST BUY's powerful performance makes it one of the fastest drives on the market. Solidigm and its two 30.72TB SSDs: The D5-P5430 (coming later this year) and the D5- P5316 , as well as the 61TB D5-P5336

Need to expand the local storage on your PC or Mac for music and movies, or all the pics and videos you collect from your phone? The traditional answer has been an external hard drive. The newer, better answer is a portable solid-state drive (SSD). The Crucial X9 Pro is a competitively priced, highly portable external SSD that should appeal to most anyone. The X9 Pro is great for travelers, or indeed anyone who wants a fast, reasonably rugged and secure portable SSD.

How to Tell What Is the Best External SSD?

This is my this HONORABLE MENTION BUY because the Seagate Expansion 12TB External Hard Drive is a reliable, easy-to-use external hard drive. Yes: Again, hard drives are slower because they have to physically rotate disks and move a reader arm to access your data. Just how much faster is it to read data from flash cells than from particular points on spinning platters? Typical throughput for consumer hard drives is in the range of 100MBps to 200MBps, while SSDs that support Thunderbolt 3 or 4, or USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, can have read and write speeds pushing 2,000MBps or even higher. (One factor in hard drive speed is spin rate—among external drives, 5,400rpm units are more common and more affordable than 7,200rpm.) A tiny yet highly capable external SSD, the Crucial X9 Pro scored well in our benchmarks and comes in capacities up to 4TB. Its interface supports the USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard, which affords near-universal compatibility if your computer has a USB port (although you’ll need an adapter to connect to a USB-A port). The X9 Pro’s basic ruggedization features and 256-bit AES encryption protect it from tumbles as well as both meteorological and human threats while you’re traveling. Who It’s For This Xbox hard drive is designed to hold up to 300 games. That's plenty of space to keep your entire gaming library, and you can enjoy lightning-fast speeds when you play.