An external hard drive is useful in storing important personal and official files. It may be used for backing up or storing documents when your Mac’s storage space is not enough. An external hard drive simply expands Mac’s storage capacity without having to open the machine to fit it and without the need to carry the extra weight wherever you take your Mac.
Whether you need an external drive to store more data or back up what you already have on the Mac, you need to get the best. A good drive should have some qualities that make it stand out from the rest. What are these qualities? What is the best external hard drive for Mac 2019?
The only problem is choosing the best external hard drive, Fortunately, we have a solution In this ultimate guide, we have identified top portable storage drives for MAC, Xbox One, PS4 and PC that you can buy right now. If you have a favorite hard drive to use with your Mac, be sure to tell us all about it in the comments below! Updated September 2018: These are still our favorite external hard drives for your Mac. This post may contain affiliate links. Our pick for best portable external backup drive for 2017 is Western Digital’s My Passport 4TB drive. Although it’s a tick or two slower than other backup drives (like our runner-up, for. We'll help you find the best external hard drive for your PC or Mac. Can buy in 2018. With the best external hard drives, you never have to worry about running out of space again, even if you. Top 5 Best External Hard Drives for Mac in 2018. Maxtor M3 Portable External Hard Drive. Although the brand is presently owned by Seagate, the M3 still is presented under the Maxtor umbrella. This external hard drive is provided with a 3-year guarantee. Presented in a handy portable form, it is designed to store up to 4TB of.
In this article, we will answer all your questions about buying an external hard drive for your Mac this New Year. Read on and find out more!
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1. NAS drives
A network attached storage (NAS) Driver Is one to which a Mac can connect to via a network without the need to use cables and other physical connections. These drives can be used solely or as more than one drive that mirrors the data stored in each. This means that the data is safer. NAS drives can be used by all users connected to a network to store data and access it.
The best external hard drive needs to support time machine. This is the default backup software that runs on Macs. A hard drive that supports this software makes it easy for you to backup all your files in it. It is always good to have this backup because you never know when your Mac will crash or experience any other issue. With a backup, you will have a way to get all the information back. A good drive will backup the entire system including the operating system.
Best mac for gaming 2018. This is the speed at which the hard drive can rotate to be read from r wrote on by different programs. This is very important as it will determine how responsive the drive is to the actions that you do. In terms of speed, hard drives are generally available as two types. There is the traditional HDD and the new SSD. The latter is lighter and faster than HDDs. However, SSDs cost more than HDDs.
This refers to the number of hard drives there is in the external storage device. While some have only one hard drive, others have two or more. More bays mean more storage space and the option to use RAID performance. However, more bays come at an additional cost.
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) refers to a data storage virtualization technology in which multiple hard drives are used as logical units that increase performance. When you buy an external drive that has two or more hard disks you can use RAID to improve performance. You can even mirror the contents of one disk in the other and as such you will have two copies of the data. This makes it safer as you can get access to the data if something happens to the computer and the other disk.
Best External Hard Drive for Mac 2019 – Our Top Picks
1. LaCie Rugged RAID, Thunderbolt Portable Drive ($348.95)
This portable hard drive is sturdy and has great performance. It is resistant to shock, water and dust. It is perfect for use on the go. The two internal hard drives with a total of 4GB storage have performances of up to 240MB/s. It supports RAID; choose RAID 0 for fast performance or RAID 1 for duplicated data.
With the USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt ports, you can easily connect to your Mac and also add other peripheral devices. Any computer will recognize this device. Use it to expand your storage and/or backup your data as you wish.
This is a portable Mac external hard drive that has a capacity of 4TB and fast data speeds of up to 220MB/s. Backup anything you want and manage it with the Seagate dashboard software. You can backup data from Windows PCs and Macs thanks to this hard drive’s support for the plug-and-play NTFS driver.
Quickbooks 2018 pro for mac. The USB 3.0 port provides connectivity with quick file transfers. There is no need for power supply as the USB connection is enough.
This NAS device will act as the digital hub of your home or office. It has 4TB storage space that can be used for backups. It comes RAID 1 configured to ensure all data remains safe. The data stored here can be accessed from anywhere thanks to private cloud connectivity.
The user-friendly interface makes it easy to manage files. The built-in bit torrent client makes it easy to download files. The two premium grade HDDs in place are durable and have lower operating costs.
This hard drive has 4GB space that can be used to store files, photos, and videos from your phone or computer. Easily connect the hard drive to your router and you will be able to view files stored in the hard disk on the go on your phone or computer. Photos and videos on your phone will be backed up automatically. Abel font free download for mac. As for backing up, use the Time Machine to backup and sync all your Mac devices.
Best Portable External Hard Drive For Mac 2018 Football
This can be done wirelessly whereas backups from external hard drives and flash drives can be done via the USB port available. There are many apps that connect devices to this hard drive making it the best hard drive for Mac that provides easy control.
5. Seagate 8TB Desktop External Hard Drive ($149.99)
Expand the hard drive of your Mac with this the 8GB on this external hard drive. Transfer data fast via the USB 3.0 supported. Image glitch app mac. The installation process is as simple as connecting the power adapter and USB cable and you can start working. As a Mac user, you will need to reformat it. Do this easily by following the application guide provided.
If you have been looking for the best portable hard drive for Mac, this is it. It has great looks and works perfectly. The 3TB will store massive amounts of data while the sleek design and light weight make it ideal to be carried wherever you go. It is designed specifically for use with the Mac and is compatible with Time Machine.
Backup all the files on your Mac or iPhone. You can then open the files by simply dragging and dropping them from the Finder. Keep everything secure with the 256-bit AES hardware encryption and WD security software included in this hard drive. The WD build this hard drive sturdy and long lasting. It is shock-resistant.
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The best external hard drive for Mac 2018 has lots of storage capacity among other qualities. Whether you will choose a portable one or prefer a NAS, it is up to you. If you are a person who is always on the move the prior will be suitable for you whereas people who are mainly at home or office would be better off with the more equipped but less portable drives. Ensure to have a picture of what you are looking for before you decide to buy. Try the above external hard drives and you will be pleased. Just be sure to pick the one that is right for you.
It's a Great Time to Go for a Drive
In an era when Apple charges 99 cents per month for 50GB of iCloud storage and Google offers 100GB of free storage for two years with the purchase of a new Chromebook, mainstream external hard drives might appear less essential than they once were.
But modern external drives are faster, more stylish, and often more durable than their counterparts from a few years ago. They're ever cheaper and more capacious, too. For about $50, you can add a terabyte of extra storage to your laptop or desktop by just plugging in a USB cable.
Choosing an external drive isn't as simple as buying the most expensive one you can afford, however. The capacity and type of storage mechanism are the two most important factors to consider, and each one will increase or decrease the cost dramatically depending on your needs. Other factors include the physical size of the drive (is it designed to be carted around or to sit on your desk?), how rugged it is, the interface it uses to connect to your PC, and even what colors it comes in. This guide will help you make sense of all the options. Here are the key questions to ask as you shop.
The Need for Speed: Hard Drive or SSD?Best Portable External Hard Drive
Solid-state drives (SSD) have fewer moving parts than a traditional hard drive, 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. (For an in-depth look at exactly how this cell-based storage works, check out this tech explainer from sister site ExtremeTech.)
Just how much faster is it to access data stored in flash cells than those stored on a spinning platter? Typical read and write speeds for consumer drives with a single spinning platter are in the 100MBps to 200MBps range, depending on their USB interface and whether they spin at 5,400rpm (more common) or 7,200rpm (more expensive and less common). External SSDs offer twice that speed and sometimes much more, with typical results on our benchmark tests in excess of 400MBps. 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 your external SSD in seconds rather than the minutes it would take with an external spinning drive.
Not only is it faster to read and write data stored in flash cells than those stored on a spinning platter, but it's also safer. Because there is no spinning platter or moving magnetic head, if you bump the SSD while you're accessing its data, there is no risk that your files will become corrupted and unreadable.
While external SSDs are now readily available and cheaper than they were a few years ago, they're not a complete replacement for spinning drives. Larger external drives designed to stay on your desk or in a server closet still mostly use spinning drives, taking advantage of their higher capacities and lower prices compared with SSDs. Want to know more about how hard drives and SSDs compare? Check out our explainer SSD vs. HDD: What's the Difference?
Physical Size Matters: Desktop or Portable Drive?
If you have a large photo or video collection—perhaps you are a photo or video editor, or maybe a movie buff—you'll likely need several terabytes of space in which to store it. So your best option is a desktop-class drive. We define these as having one or more spinning-platter drives inside and requiring its own dedicated power cable. Of course, in this scenario, your files are going to have to stay at your desk.
A desktop drive with a single platter mechanism inside will typically use a 3.5-inch drive inside and will be found in capacities up to 12TB, and most are roughly 5 inches tall and 2 inches wide. Photo stream download to mac. In addition to storing large media collections, these drives can also serve as inexpensive repositories for backups of your computer's hard drive that you schedule using either the software that came with the drive or a third-party backup utility.
The next size up for consumer desktop drives is about the same height but twice as wide to accommodate additional drive mechanisms in the chassis, such as with the Western Digital My Book Duo. These larger drives are more expensive but also much more capacious; the highest-capacity current models employ two drives for up to 20TB of storage. Note: In the case of these and single-platter-drive products, you're not meant to swap out the drive or drives inside.
The largest desktop drives are often much, much larger than the first two categories, so large that you'll want to stick them under your desk or in a dedicated server closet. They're mostly intended for professional use in editing studios, surveillance control rooms, and the like. Their defining characteristic is the ability to swap drives in and out easily, so they provide quick access to the drive bays at the front of the device. Most are sold without drives included, so you can install any drive you want (usually, 3.5-inch drives, but some support 2.5-inchers). Their total storage capacities are usually limited only by their number of available bays and the capacities of the drives you put in them.
At the other end of the physical-size spectrum are portable drives, some of which now use an SSD inside instead of a spinning platter to save space, as well as to increase throughput and durability. These drives can be truly tiny, weighing just a few ounces and with their largest sides measuring less than 3 inches long, like with the Samsung Portable SSD T5. Others use spinning platters and are a bit larger, like the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive, but they still fit easily in a purse or even a coat pocket. Portable drives get their power from the computer to which you connect them, through the interface cable, so there's no need for a spare wall outlet.
Need Redundancy or Extreme Speed? Consider a RAID
If you buy a larger desktop drive with two or more spinning platters, you'll almost certainly have the ability to configure the drive as a RAID array using included software. Depending on which RAID level you choose, you can prioritize capacity, speed, or data redundancy, or some combination thereof.
A collection of spinning drives configured with a RAID level designed for faster access can approximate the speeds of an SSD, while you should consider a drive with support for RAID levels 1, 5, or 10 if you're storing really important data that you can't afford to lose. Hit the link above for explanation of the strengths of each RAID level.
What Interface Should You Look For?
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. Unfortunately, these connection types are constantly changing, and the internet is littered with outdated references to legacy interface types such as eSATA and FireWire.
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Right now, the fastest mainstream connection type is Thunderbolt 3, which is handy assuming you have a newer laptop or desktop with a Thunderbolt 3 port. All late-model Apple laptops have them, but they're much scarcer on Windows machines. This interface uses a USB Type-C connector and offers blazing throughput of 40GBps. As an added bonus, a desktop drive that supports Thunderbolt 3 might also come with additional DisplayPort and USB connections that allow you to use the drive box as a hub for your keyboard, mouse, monitor, and other peripherals.
You'll really only see the speed benefits of Thunderbolt 3, however, if you have a drive that's SSD-based, or a RAID array. If you'd rather save money than time transferring your data, if you're buying a desktop drive with a single platter-based mechanism inside, or if you have a PC that lacks Thunderbolt 3, you'll want to make sure your drive has a USB 3.0 connection. Nearly every recent drive we reviewed supports USB 3.0, and the same goes for laptops and desktops.
Do You Need to Go Rugged?
If you carry your drive around frequently, you'll want to pay attention to how rugged the drive is. Some models include plastic bumpers, and some even meet military standards for shock and dust protection. (Look for support for specifications such as IP67 or IP68; see our roundup of the best rugged hard drives and SSDs.)
And of course, if you're carrying your drive around with you, you want it to look nice. Some, like the Samsung T5, come in multiple colors, while others, like the ADATA SD700, are super-slim and ready to be tossed in a pocket.
Perhaps the only thing you don't need to pay much attention to is the warranty. If your drive breaks because you damaged it, the warranty likely won't cover it. 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.
Let's Look at the Top Models We've Tested.
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 others have built-in Wi-Fi and can double as an all-in-one home media server. (See our roundup of the best wireless hard drives and SSDs.) Some of that kind even come with extra-large batteries that can charge your smartphone while you're on the go.
To get you started in the right direction toward the right add-on backup/storage solution, below are 10 of the best drives we've tested of late, at a variety of prices and capacities. Some are SSD-based, while others are platter. For more options, also take a look at our guides to the best network-attached storage (NAS) devices, the top cloud storage services we've tested, and, for PC builders and upgraders, the best internal M.2 SSDs.
Best Portable 2tb External Hard Drive 2018Best External Hard Drives Featured in This Roundup:Best Ssd External Hard Drive 2018
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