It is also well suited as long-term multimedia storage hooked up to a PC or large-screen smart TV from Sony or a recent Samsung as well - some smart TVs support NTFS and FAT32 or NTFS and ExFat, very rarely do they support all three file systems. Solid-state drives (SSDs) have fewer moving parts than traditional hard drives, and they offer the speediest access to your data. Unlike a conventional disk-based hard drive, which stores data on a spinning platter or platters accessed by a moving magnetic head, an SSD uses a collection of flash cells—similar to the ones that make up a computer's RAM—to save data. Don’t underestimate the Kingston XS2000 based on its size. While it’s tiny – less than 7cm long – it’s also ludicrously speedy, posting sequential read/write speeds of 2012MB/sec and 1854MB/sec on the USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port of our test rig. It’s substantially slower over an old-school USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A port, or even USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C, but if you’ve got the connectivity to run it at full speed, you’ll see lightning-fast file transfers or be able to run demanding games and apps straight from the drive. Built for the professional market and priced as such, SanDisk’s Extreme Pro v2 has a durable, secure design. When paired with the latest systems that fully support its USB 20 Gbps connection, it delivers very fast file transfer speeds that rival the Thunderbolt 3-based competition. The Extreme Pro v2 houses WD’s SN730E, a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD, and an ASMedia ASM2364 USB Gen 2x2 bridge chip.

READ NEXT: The best external hard drives for PS4 | The best external hard drives for Xbox One Should I buy an SSD? We've tested dozens of external drives and collected the best external SSDs for your storage needs. Used as a USB Type-C drive, the SanDisk Pro G40 does nothing to justify its high price. Sequential read/write speeds (1,055MB/sec and 1,012MB/sec in our tests) are nothing special, and its random read/write speeds aren’t particularly fast. However, plug it into a Mac, or a laptop with a Thunderbolt 4 port, and you’ll unleash a monster. On Thunderbolt 4, the Pro G40 posted read speeds of 3.15GB/sec and write speeds of 2.6GB/sec, making it the fastest drive we’ve ever tested. And nothing else even gets close for random read/write speeds. hard drive is the best in 2020? Are you not aware that seagate released a portable (very good and equally reliable) 5TB drive in 2017?!?

The best external SSDs to buy

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. Over the Type-C connection you get sequential read speeds of 1090MB/sec and write speeds of 1050MB/sec, although these drop to 469MB/sec and 461MB/sec over the slower Type-A. Random read/write speeds are speedy either way, peaking at 262MB/sec and 241MB/sec. While it’s not in the same league for speed as the fastest USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 SSDs, it’s an effective all rounder at a price more of us can afford. How an external drive connects to your PC or Mac is second only to the type of storage mechanism it uses in determining how fast you'll be able to access data. These connection types are ever in flux, but these days, most external hard drives use a flavor of USB, or in rare cases, Thunderbolt.

Over the years, I have reviewed iPad and iPhone science apps, plus the occasional camera, laptop, keyboard, and mouse. I've also written a host of articles about astronomy, space science, travel photography, and astrophotography for PCMag and its past and present sibling publications (among them, Mashable and ExtremeTech), as well as for the PCMag Digital Edition. If you're looking for a portable 8TB, there aren't any single 2.5" HDD options. However, LaCie and Oyen Digital both offer a Rugged RAID that is 8TB in RAID0. Oyen Digital also offers a 10TB option. Not only is the Fantom DrivesGF3B10000UP one of the faster 10TB external hard drives on the market, but it’s also currently on a 7% discount. This hard drive is entirely compatible with Xbox One, Macintosh, and PC. Providing 7200 RPM, it’s impressively fast which saves you precious time. It’s 2.2 pounds and only 7.75 inches tall, 4.75 inches wide, and 1.4 inches deep. We primarily recommend it for anyone looking for a faster than normal 10TB external hard drive! Say hello to hard drives- the perfect solution for all your storage problems. Store as many pictures, videos, audio files, movies or documents as you want with our range of external hard drives. We have a selection from all the brands like Toshiba, Seagate, Samsung and more, so that you find what you are looking for. Just recently, theSeagate (STEL10000400)had a drastic reduction in price 36% off the original amount. Although we’re unsure if this discount is permanent or temporary, we believe it’s a remarkable 10TB external hard drive. It provides two USB 3.0 ports and a 2-year limited warranty.

Whether you’re running out of storage space or in need of a fast backup, these speedy HDDs and SSDs will give you what you need

are any of these practical to have a portable os installed on them and have it at usable speed?The differing SSDs would make no difference. It would be nice if the people writing an article highlighting data transfer speeds knew the difference between a gigabyte (GB) and a gigabit (Gb). 1 GB = 8Gb! This means that much of the speed will be wasted on the Xbox Series S/X and PS5 consoles, where the P50 could be used to store games you aren’t playing or run last-generation titles. On a fast PC with the right connection, though, it’s an absolute beast. It’s also happy working in the most demanding content creation apps, making it one powerful and versatile external drive. For example, the first drive (SanDisk) has an advertised top speed of 7.8 Gbps, not 80 Gbps as the authors state. Users Say:“This drive was easy to install and to use. Great investment to protect my photographs. 8TB of storage for a reasonable price and the product is very sturdy. Now I can free up space on my computer.” Tech Specs & Details

I think one metric for comparing storage is to look at Sustained Write Performance as well, because it affects anyone who needs to do a large write: whether it's just once a week, or else many times a day. Just how much faster is it to access data stored in flash cells? Typical read and write speeds for consumer drives with spinning platters are in the 100MBps to 200MBps range, depending on platter densities and whether they spin at 5,400rpm (more common) or 7,200rpm (less common). External SSDs offer at least twice that speed and now, often much more, with typical results on our benchmark tests in excess of 400MBps for the slowest ones. Practically speaking, this means you can move gigabytes of data (say, a 4GB feature-length film, or a year's worth of family photos) to an external SSD in seconds rather than the minutes it would take with an external spinning drive.For mechanical hard disks, the very fastest drives max out at 2Gbits/sec so there’s no need to go beyond USB 3.2 Gen 1. Are there any extra features worth having? The LaCie 2big RAID array promises the reliability and delivers the performance benefit you'd expect from 7,200rpm platters, magnified by the default RAID 0 setting, while the optional RAID 1 setting is available if you want data redundancy. (A JBOD mode is also available if you don't want to use RAID.) Who It's For

This new drive from Toshiba has a few advantages over older favourites from Seagate And Western Digital. First, it’s relatively fast by HDD standards, with sequential read speeds of over 150MB/sec and write speeds of 160MB/sec. It’s actually a smidgen faster than the excellent Canvio Gaming. And while its random read/write speeds aren’t anything to write home about, they’re no worse than those of comparable drives, and we’d recommend an SSD these days for actively running Windows apps or games. Remember: no matter how fast the port is, if the hard disk or SSD within the drive can’t run fast enough, you won’t see any benefits. The same goes if your computer doesn’t support that connection speed; you’d be surprised how few desktops and laptops have even a single USB 3.2 gen 2×2 port.

The best external hard drives you can buy in 2023

Just make sure you get an enclosure that matches your drive, be that SATA or NVMe. And also keep in mind that DIY external drives usually aren't sealed, so they're not as likely to stand up to dust and dampness as well as external SSDs and portable hard drives that are designed to do so. Finding Discounts on the Best External Storage Drives Some professional portable HDDs and SSDs also support Intel’s Thunderbolt technology, with maximum speeds of 40Gbits/sec (4.8GB/sec) for Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4. USB 4 ports and drives are also starting to appear with speeds to match, though you may have to wait a while before the SSDs themselves can max them out. The only case with hard drives where the USB standard matters much is if you connect a drive to an old-style, low-bandwidth USB 2.0 port, which is better reserved for items like keyboards and mice. (Also, if it's a portable drive, that USB 2.0 port may not supply sufficient power to run the drive in the first place, so the speed shortfall may be moot.) Any remotely recent computer will have some faster USB 3-class ports, though. If you deal with any sensible information leaving it in an unencrypted drive is risky. While encryption can be done in software with a high degree of fine-tuning, nothing beats a purely hardware-based solution that frees you from the software-configuration complexities.