7 best external hard drives

You have used up your computer or phone memory and need a device to store photos, music and files. Depending on your personal needs, there are several types of external hard drives that you can choose from. A professional photographer or videographer may need a large hard drive, while a student only needs a portable hard drive. If you're not sure which drive to choose, read the following article to find the best external hard drive for you.

1. External hard drive Western Digital My Passport

My Passport is an inexpensive hard drive, but offers outstanding performance over competitors, thanks to a USB 3.0 port and an excellent hard drive controller. This hard drive allows transmission with a maximum read speed of 174 MBps and writing speed of 168 MBps. Products range in size from 1 TB to 4 TB.

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This hard drive weighs more than 8 ounces and is about the same size as the actual passport. This makes it one of the smallest and lightest hard drives. My passport has a single cable used to transmit and supply electricity. When the hard drive works, there will be a blue light shining and four rubber feet keep it safe on the surface. Western Digital has tried to reduce the amount of carbon emissions by using recycled materials for casing. Because the cover is made of plastic, it is highly durable.

Tailor-made features are simple. My Passport is available with WD's SmartWare software. It has two separate devices when plugged in - a hard drive with external storage space and a hard drive with software built in by the manufacturer. The intuitive interface and built-in software allow easy installation and management settings. Backup and restore options allow users to set up incremental backups each time they connect a hard drive to a computer or device. If you accidentally delete files from My Passport, these files will easily be restored. Hard drive provides 256-bit data protection and encryption.

2. Seagate Backup Plus Hub 6TB STEL6000100 hard drive

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If the price is not a problem, you should consider purchasing the Seagate Backup Plus Hub hard drive. It has SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives, which allow for more physical memory bits in the same space without reducing the size of the bits. This hard drive has a large capacity (3TB, 4TB, 6TB and 8TB), fast and flexible. It is compatible with both Windows and Mac, just install the NTFS driver for Mac and you can use it to change between Windows and Mac computers without reformatting. The front two high-speed USB 3.0 ports allow users to recharge other USB devices and with Seagate Dashboard, you can schedule them automatically or backup them as required when connecting a hard drive to a computer.

3. Seagate Backup Plus 4TB external hard drive

Seagate's 4TB external hard drive is compatible with Apple Time Machine, making it the perfect external storage option for Apple ecosystem users. Just download Seagate Dashboard software on your laptop and you can drag and drop any movies, photos, songs or other files to this hard drive. The device also has cloud connectivity and social media backup, which is a great hard drive for YouTube users with large files that want to back up or take photos with multiple photos on Flickr.

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The silver design of the hard drive fits into the Macbook and connects to a high-speed USB 3.0 connection. This hard drive does not need any external power supply, it just needs to connect via USB. It weighs about half a pound and is 4.5 inches long, easy to carry in a bag to carry. If you don't need to use all 4TB, it also has smaller options for you to choose from.

4. External Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB Portable Hard Drive (HDTB310XK3AA)

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Measuring just larger than a card, Toshiba's Canvio Basics mobile hard drive is designed to help you easily carry all your files on the move. It has capacities of 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 3TB, just plug into the computer via USB 3.0 port. To use it with your Mac, you'll have to reformat the drive to a format compatible with OS X. This hard drive has a much faster transfer rate than using USB 2.0 technology, but still has compatibility reverse. It has a rotational speed of up to 5400 rpm and has Internal Shock Sensor and Ramp Loading Technology technology to keep files safe.

5. Silicon Power 1TB Rugged Armor A60 Military-Grade external hard drive

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Silicon Power external hard drive Armor A60 can hardly be destroyed, it is not only waterproof (IPX4) and slip-resistant (up to 122 cm), but also has anti-scratch and shock-proof ability thanks to its cover Silicon materials are designed on both sides and edges. Impressive read and write speeds plus USB 3.0 technology have delivered fast transfer speeds. This hard drive is compatible with both Mac and Windows computers and comes with SP Widget software for data backup and recovery, 256-bit AES encryption and cloud storage for efficient data management. The versions are available up to 5TB and it is backed by a three-year warranty with full service and technical support.

6. External HDD Toshiba Canvio Connect II 2TB Portable Hard Drive

While Seagate and Western Digital have external hard drives in the top, Toshiba's Canvio Connect II 2TB portable hard drive is not a hard drive left behind. Canvio measures 4.3 x 3.1 x 0.8 inches and weighs 0.5 pounds. Size from 500GB to 3TB and it works with both Mac and Windows hardware.

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Setting up the hard drive is simple: just one USB port to connect to the computer. Read speeds on the 5400rpm drive are 98MB / sec for small files and 103 MB / sec for medium files, while the write speed is 112 MB / sec for small and medium files. Large file has a read speed of 109 MB / sec and write speed at 112.4 MB / sec.

Protection backs up data easily with passwords and data access while moving through cloud backup with 10GB of online storage. This mobile hard drive has a warranty period of up to two years.

7. External hard drive Seagate Expansion 1TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0

If you are a business owner, you will want a large hard drive and copy files quickly. Seagate's extended portable hard drive meets all those requirements and much more. It has 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB models, which are formatted to work with Windows computers. If you use a Mac, you can reformat it in seconds. In fact, buying a pre-formatted hard drive for Windows can be cheaper when buying an external hard drive for Mac.

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The hard drive measures 4.8 x 3.2 x 6.6 inches and weighs 6.4 ounces, small and light enough to fit into a book bag. It has a rotation speed of 5,400 rpm, in contrast to some 7,200 rpm models, but it still delivers remarkable performance: write speeds of about 120MB / sec and 130MB / sec to read. However, slower speed also means less energy consumption.

See more:

1. Experience gold when choosing to buy an external hard drive
2. Turn internal hard drive into an external hard drive
3. How to format an external hard drive to FAT32?