The Best External Hard Drives for 2020

But modern ones are faster, more sophisticated, and often more hard-wearing than their counterparts from a few years ago. They're ever more spacious for the money, too.

Getting the right hard drive in place can resolve your digital storage difficulties for years. You'll finally have enough space for all those movies, music files, photos, documents, and everything else you've managed to collect – and if you buy one of the finest external hard drives, you'll be able to entrust it with your data.

Here are some of our top choices for external storage options.

1. SEAGATE BACKUP PLUS 4TB:

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1. SPECIFICATIONS
2. Capacity: 1TB-5TB
3. Drive: HDD
4. Connector: USB
5. Portable: Yes

You can pick up Seagate's portable drives in a multitude of capacities, colours, and dimensions, so head to the Seagate site for a complete breakdown, but across the board you're looking at USB 3.0 speeds, Windows and Mac support, and 120 MB/s or higher transfers, whatever suits your purpose.

2. Buffalo Mini Station Extreme NFC external hard drive:

1. SPECIFICATIONS
2. Capacity: 2TB
3. Interface: USB 3.0

If you're looking for the best external hard drive that will exclude you a ton of cash, Buffalo's Mini Station Extreme NFC could be the one you are looking for. With compatibility for both Mac and Windows technologies, the Buffalo Mini Station Extreme NFC is very flexible, and comes with a durable case that's dust and water resistant, along with a built-in USB 3.0 cable.

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Not only is your data kept protected from blows and drops with the rugged shell, but it also comes with 256-bit AES security features and NFC (Near Field Communication) features as well.

3. Samsung T5 SSD external hard drive:

1. SPECIFICATIONS
2. Capacity: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB
3. Interface: USB Type-C

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Samsung has an exceptional reputation for external SSDs, thanks to products like the T3, and the T5 builds on its precursor by adding a fast USB Type-C connection that ekes out every last bit of performance from the solid-state drive inside. Of course, it's also backwards compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 if your PC doesn't support USB Type-C. Be equipped to shell out a bit more cash, but it's well worth it.

4. LaCie Rugged USB-C 4TB External Hard Drive:

1. SPECIFICATIONS
2. Capacity: 4TB
3. Interface: USB-C

LaCie's rugged external hard drives are a great buzz among content creators who are always out on the field. It's shock, dust, and rain-resistant, making it perfect for enduring the elements when you're out in nature. Moreover, the best part is that you can easily recover it in case of emergency by contacting LaCie rugged data recovery professionals. It comes in diverse types and connectivity as well, with the Thunderbolt/USB-C option being idyllic for MacBook and Dell XPS users, and the RAID option being seamless for creative

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professionals. Since it comes with up to 8TB, you can also pick and choose depending on your storage requirements.

When buying the best external hard drive for your requirements, you need to make sure you get a device that can carefully and securely store your important files. Reliability is of the highest importance here, as you do not want to buy an external hard drive that fails on you - making you lose all your imperative backups

Samuel Daniel

Update 24 October 2020