Macworld The Best Mac Hard Drives For 2018

• The Best External Hard Drive For Mac
• Apple Mac Hard Drives
• Macworld The Best Mac Hard Drives For 2018
• Other World Computing

Anyone who uses a PC should have an external drive. It's not only a useful means of data backup and storage, it also allows you to transport files from your desktop or laptop to another device.

A 1TB hard drive can costs a little as £40, a 1TB SSD around £240. An external hard drive is, for many, the best solution. Just as the Mac mini slimmed down in 2010 and abandoned its optical drive in 2011, it's time for a new Mac mini design that's built without leaving any space for traditional hard drive.

Xbox One X users, as well, would be wise to invest in an external drive as a way of augmenting the console's measly 1TB hard drive (the external drive needs to be USB 3.0-compatible and will be formatted when you insert the drive).

The best external drives 2019

• WD My Passport 4TB: Best external backup drive [amazon.com]
• Samsung T5 SSD: Best external performance drive [amazon.com]
• Samsung Portable SSD X5: Best portable Thunderbolt 3 drive [samsung.com]

The question is, which external drive is right for you? To answer that, we've combed through our reviews of both external hard disks and SSDs to pick the top drives we've tested. We'll also walk you through what you need to know to buy the best external drive for your needs.

Updated March 27, 2019 to add two reviews that put style on an equal footing with performance.

• The G-Technology G-Drive mobile USB-C external drive (available on Amazon) performs well, and G-Technology always delivers attractive designs that seem intended to harmonize with Apple products. Alas, along with the Apple design cues, comes an relatively Apple-like price. Read our full review.
• The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch (available on Amazon) is a svelte drive that sports an attractive basket-weave polyester fabric, as well as good benchmark results. The price is pretty affordable, too. Read our full review.

Best external backup drive

Lots of storage for less than the competition, attractive styling, and good performance with small files highlight this USB 3.0 portable hard drive. An excellent bargain.

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 example) in sequential file writing (think copying movie files), it does better at writing small files (think hundreds of Word or Excel documents.) It's not flashy or super-fast, but for most people who only whip it out once a month to run backups and then shove it back into a drawer, those things don't matter as much as the capacity, price, and reasonable performance. (Read our full review.)

Runner-up

If capacity and portability are your primary concerns, and the Backup Plus Portable fits up to 5TB in pretty much a standard 2.5-inch USB external package. It's fast with large files, but on the slow side with small ones. Regardless, it's a worthy drive that gives you more space for your movies and games.

Our runner-up for this popular category is Seagate's slightly larger and somewhat faster Backup Plus Portable. Like the WD above, it's a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps) drive. It tops out at 5TB in a single drive and can also be had in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. There's even a 'fast' 4TB version that uses two hard drives in RAID for more performance.

In our tests of the 4TB version, we found the Seagate to be slightly faster with large file transfers (think movies) but worse with small file transfers (think Office documents). It's still a worthy runner-up, though. (Read our full review.)

Best performance USB drive

The T5 is easily the fastest non-RAID portable USB SSD we've tested. It makes full use of its Gen 2, 3.1 interface while retaining the svelte profile of the T3. A winner for sure.

Remember that scene in Office Space where Peter Gibbons is desperately trying to save files to disk before getting out of the office? Yeah, mmkay. If you need ultra-fast performance in a package that you can put in your pocket, look no further than Samsung's new T5 . Not much larger than a book of matches, the T5 comes in sizes from 500GB to 2TB. The best part is its speed. The drive features a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) over USB Type C.

And no, unlike most USB 'thumb drives' this baby doesn't hit the wall when writing files. It can write 20GB of files in just 110 seconds. If it's a single large file, it'll write it in 58 seconds. (Read our full review.)

The Extreme Portable SSD's convenient form factor trumps the drive's slight performance deficit compared to the Samsung T5. With its fast USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) capability, this is currently our favorite portable SSD.

Runner-up

The new drive here is the runner-up, which some may consider an even better pick than the Samsung T5: The Sandisk Extreme Portable. You can read our review of it here, where we give it 4.5 stars and an Editor's Choice Award. It's a seriously fast USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) drive, just not quite as fast as the Samsung T5.

You might still choose it instead of the Samsung T5 because it's more comfortable with its rubberized grip finish. It comes with a nifty combo cable that adapts to old-school square USB Type A and also works with USB-C ports.

The Sandisk Extreme Portable displaces the Sandisk Extreme 900 drive, but we think it's a fair decision because the Extreme 900 is, well, pricey. At $700 for 1.92TB, it's hard to justify over the Extreme Portable's $521 for 2TB.

Best portable Thunderbolt 3 drive

Portable Thunderbolt 3 drives have been long overdue, but we're happy to recommend Samsung's new Portable SSD X5 drive. The full review is on our sister site Macworld, but let's just say it's stupidly fast and kinda like putting a scorching Samsung 970 Pro in an enclosure that fits in your pocket and not giving up much performance at all.

Notice that we don't say 'best portable performance Thunderbolt 3 drive,' because by very definition, a Thunderbolt 3 drive should be blazingly fast. The only reason we're not universally recommending the Portable SSD X5 is the relative rarity of Thunderbolt 3 ports on PCs. You'd need to be driving a brand-new Dell XPS 13 or HP Spectre x360 13 to be able to use Thunderbolt 3.

What you need to know before you buy

Capacity and price

External-drive shopping can pull you deep into specs and features, but the most important two numbers for consumers are capacity and price. Many assume the lowest-cost drive gets you the most value, but it often doesn't. In fact, dollar for dollar, it's often the worst deal.

For example, we took the WD Black My Passport portable drive and compared the prices of the 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB drive, on capacity and price. Keep in mind, this is one drive on one day (July 11, 2017), and just one vendor, Amazon, but it illustrates the point.

If you look at the chart above, you can see the worst deal is that $58 1TB HDD, while the 4TB nets the most storage capacity for the money. Here are the same numbers in a bar chart form:

So yes, if you're buying an external drive, you pay more for the lowest capacity. However, this doesn't mean you should automatically shell out for that 4TB drive. In the end, it still costs more. If you really don't need the storage capacity of a 4TB drive, put that extra $57 toward something you actually do need.

Interface

The vast majority of drives today are USB drives. From there it gets confusing. Today, the flavors include: USB 3.0, USB SuperSpeed, USB 3.1 Gen 1 (which is basically USB 3.0), and USB 3.1 Gen 2.

The Best External Hard Drive For Mac

For the most part, it doesn't matter which of these versions you get (beware the much older USB 2.0, though). USB 3.0 allows transfer speeds up to 5Gbps, as does USB 3.1 Gen 1. USB 3.1 Gen 2 is the fastest USB version and can move data up to 10Gbps. No single hard drive today can surpass the throughput of USB 3.1 Gen 1, though. The sleight of hand to watch for is if a drive vendor lists 'USB 3.1' in the specs without specifying Gen 1 or Gen 2.

The only place Gen 2 can help is with an SSD. The good news is that while USB 3.1 Gen 2 used to be only in crazy expensive SSD external drives, it's fairly affordable today. A Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD that is our runner up for portable storage can be had for $125 in a 500GB capacity.

Ports

External drives come with a variety of confusing and esoteric ports. Here's what you need to care about.

USB 3.0 Micro B port is the most common port on portable backup drives today. It's basically the same Micro USB port used on your phone, but beefed up with more connectors to hit USB 3.0 speeds. It'll hit 5Gbps and for everything but the fastest portable SSDs is still fine.

USB 3.0 Type B port is the larger, blocky version of USB 3.0 Micro B. USB 3.0 Type B is often used in larger external drive enclosures. As its name implies, it'll hit USB 3.0 speeds at up to 5Gbps.

USB Type C is the newest of the USB connectors and features a nifty reversible design that's being used on phones, tablets, and PCs. Its most important feature is that it supports up to 10Gbps transfer speeds. The key phrase here is 'up to.' USB Type C is just the connector and port on the drive (or phone), but the rules allow USB Type C to support transfer speeds from USB 2.0's 480Mbps to USB 3.0's 5Gbps and USB 3.1's 10Gbps. So don't caught up thinking that because a drive you buy has this nifty new interface and port, you'll get awesome speeds. And no, hooking up a hard drive to a USB Type C port doesn't make anything faster.

Outside the theoretical speed advantage of USB Type C is a power advantage. A standard USB Type C port on your desktop or laptop should be able to support a minimum of 15 watts, so you should be able to run larger, more power-hungry drives.

Apple Mac Hard Drives

Thunderbolt 3 was designed as one cable to rule them all, and it's rapidly looking like it will. The port basically adopts a USB Type C port and connector but also offers the ability to run pure PCIe at up to 40Gbps. For the performance-minded, Thunderbolt 3 is the natural alternative. One negative, though: It ain't cheap. Our recommended portable, the Samsung Portable SSD X5 is $697 for 1TB of capacity. A 1TB Samsung T5 on USB is only $278.

There's no reason to pay extra for a Thunderbolt 3 drive unless it's high-performance. A Thunderbolt 3 portable hard drive would be a complete waste of time and money for most people.

Thunderbolt 2 is, at this point, a dying port. Using a miniDisplayPort connector, it only really gained popularity on Macintosh PCs and is now being put out to pasture. Unless you have an older Mac, there's really no need to invest in a pricier Thunderbolt 2 drive or port today unless it's for legacy support issues.

eSATA is another mostly dead port. Made as an extension of SATA, eSATA was a cheap way to get beyond the 60MBps performance of USB 2.0. USB 3.0 put the last nail in its coffin, though, so you can ignore this port today. Like Thunderbolt 2, the only reason to invest in an eSATA drive is for use with older computers.

Buy two?

There's an old saying that 'one is none and two is one.' You can apply that phrase to space capsule oxygen tanks, plane engines, or whatever mission critical system you depend on, including hard drives.

The philosophy on external drives used for backup is that copying 10 years' worth of photos onto an external drive and then erasing it on your PC's local drive isn't actually a backup at all. If that drive gets chewed up by the dog or otherwise dies, you've lost it all.

If you're paranoid about backups, consider getting two backup drives, possibly in different colors, and then alternating complete backups of your PC to the drives every few month. This should mitigate data loss should a drive die. Truly paranoid people will even take the second drive to work so there's no chance of losing both drives to the same local disaster.

How we tested

We use our standard storage test bed to evaluate the performance of the drives we review. It's an Intel six-core Core i7-5820K on an Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard with a Thunderbolt 3 card and 32GB of RAM running Windows 8.1. We use various synthetic benchmarks including Crystal Disk Mark 5, AS SSD, and Iometer. We also use a manual file-copy test where 20GB of small files and another 20GB single file are written to and read from the storage drive. The test bed boots to a plain SATA drive, but all targets and sources for drive performance use a 24GB RAM disk.

We also use an Asus Thunder EX3 discrete Thunderbolt 3 card and Asus USB 3.1 10Gbps card for testing. The Asus card uses an Asmedia 1142 controller.

Our external drive reviews

If you'd like to learn more about our top picks as well as other options, you can find links below to all the external drives we've reviewed. We'll keep evaluating new ones on a regular basis, so be sure to check back to see what other drives we've put through their paces.

Screenshots

Description

Get a visual breakdown of your disk space in form of an interactive map, reveal the biggest space wasters, and remove them with a simple drag and drop.
Discover what's hiding inside the 'Other' storage category and clear it up.
Recover disk space by finding and removing large useless files.
Featured in the 'Essentials', 'Best of Mac App Store' in 2015, 2013 and 2011, 'Get Productive', 'Get Stuff Done' and 'Invaluable Utilities' editorials of the Mac App Store.
Over 500 reviews in the media including major titles like Forbes, TechRadar, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, MacRumors, 9to5mac, Macworld, TUAW, MacStories and many others.
Daring Fireball: '[…] Daisy Disk is my personal favorite for analyzing disk usage on the Mac. It's a beautiful app. […]'
TechRadar: '[…] we recommend an easy-to-use utility called DaisyDisk. This app helps you easily find and remove unneeded files you may have forgotten about.'
LifeHacker: 'DaisyDisk is a beautiful disk space analyzer. It's the preference of many Mac users. […] DaisyDisk is very fast and very pretty.'
Gizmodo: 'Deleting files and sorting out disk-space is one of those tasks most people dread, so I can definitely appreciate that DaisyDisk has tried making it as fun (and beautiful) as possible.'
MacRumors: 'The new DaisyDisk 4 has a new, flatter design […], with bright colors, it's able to scan drives up to 20 times as fast, and it consumes less memory when in use.'
9to5Mac: 'DaisyDisk, chosen by Apple as a Mac App Store ‘essential', provides a cleaner and more interactive circular interface for [visualizing Mac's hard drive].'
Macworld: 'For only ten bucks, DaisyDisk is a simple, convenient utility for every Mac owner, and it gets the job done well for less technically-inclined users.'
TUAW: 'Daisy Disk is the perfect example of one of those tools that should be built right into OS X.'
MacStories: 'While there are a few similar apps none of them even come close to matching the beautiful DaisyDisk interface.'
Beautiful Pixels: 'DaisyDisk is a phenomenally helpful utility app for Mac. […] This is a really fascinating way to take a look at all the files and folders residing on your Mac.'
Notable features:
• Unique interface that makes it easier than ever to find and delete large useless files
• Unmatched speed of scanning – it typically takes only a few seconds to scan your entire startup disk (depends on your disk and CPU models)
• Integrated QuickLook for previewing file content
• Scanning multiple disks in parallel at maximum speed
• Real-time information about mounted disks
• In-app file deletion
• Fully supports Retina displays

What's New

- Added a preference tab to help users add DaisyDisk to the 'Full Disk Access' list in System Preferences, when necessary.
- Fixed bugs and compliance issues.

Actually Perfect

I've been using DaisyDisk for a pretty long time now (> 3 years) and honestly its the best disk space visualisation tool i've used ever. It scans quickly and the results are clear and very well presented. I can't really think of a way it could be improved.
I usually wouldn't bother to review it but did a scan today to clean some stuff up and noticed a large amount of 'hidden' files. DaisyDisk showed a notice that it couldn't show what the files were, however, because, as an app store app, it couldn't request the appropriate permissions and directed me to download the standalone version. A lot of developers would take the opportunity here and double dip and charge you again but just took a download and it automatically transferred my license for free.. that is just a stand-up way of doing business.
It is a fast beautiful app that I consider to be fairly essential and cant recommend highly enough.

Amazing how badly I needed this

I've been getting low space messages for a year now and I've had no idea what to do about it. I've downloaded about 5 free cleaners in that time period and they usually only clean about a GB or 2. I decided to try this and within 10 minutes I've cleare out 107 GB! It lets you accesss and easily see files that no normal person would be able to. (Not even sure if you can access these files without software). You definitely need to do a little critical thinking because this app does not simply scan and delete things for you. It gives you visuals of everything thats taking up space and allows you to delete specific things. GET IT.

I love this app!

I've used Daisy Disk since early 2013, and it is a delight: visually appealing, and an extremely effective way of finding and removing clutter on your computer, or identifying space hogs that might be candidates for optimizing. If you care about that sort of thing (and I understand if you don't), this is a superb tool, and well worth the price.
UPDATE October 2018: from 5 stars to 2. Disk Xray Lite lacks the visual appeal, but is free and 10-15X faster at scanning large directories (which in my case are not even that large: <90 GB).
UPDATE November 2018: I appreciate the developer's response, which I received by email (don't know where to find it here). I did another test: Daisy Disk scanned my entire home directory in 48 seconds; Disk Xray Lite in 08 seconds (OK, only 6X faster). The latter is also visual, despite what the developers of Daisy Disk imply, and in fact while not as pretty, it is actually easier to visualize file sizes because they display as horizontal bars. I'm pretty sure the human brain is better equipped to compare the size of bars oriented in one direction to 'pie slices' all oriented in different directions.

Developer Response,

Thanks for your feedback, but the reported numbers may be inexact. I've just launched the said app and it's completed scanning of my home folder in 31.4 sec, while DaisyDisk scanned the same folder in 10.4 sec, i.e. 3 times faster. Maybe you were misled by the intermediate scanning results that the other app shows during scanning? Note that those are not really useful until the scanning completes. In all our tests, DaisyDisk has demonstrated the fastest scanning performance, in range of 3 to 20 times faster than other apps, because we put special emphasis on the scanning speed and our engineers have developed unique know-hows to achieve this. Also note that the scanning speed, while an important factor, is not all you'd want from a disk analyzing app. The visualization is what determines your efficiency of finding and removing the biggest space wasters. And again, according to our experiments, DaisyDisk's map is proving to be the most efficient method of the data presentation, in most cases. In short, it's because human mind compares visual objects' sizes much faster and easier than it reads strings of text and numbers. We appreciate your feedback and if you have additional questions or suggestions, feel free to contact our support!
UPDATE Nov 11, 2018: Thanks for the additional information. I have repeated my experiment on a clean machine and realized that the said app does not scan the entire selected folder. It skips big chunks of data, and for this reason it sometimes misleadingly appears faster. In my case, it missed the ~/Library folder, skipping 5.4 GB out of the total 5.7 GB. Actually, a lot of other folders were missing in the report too. Please, could you compare the output to DaisyDisk? Overall, when scanning actually happens, the speed is always way slower than DaisyDisk. Speaking of bars vs sectors: indeed, linear bars could be implemented as an alternative design that allows to compare sizes visually, however in that particular implementation you have a text table extended with bars, which is a suboptimal combination in many regards. I could go into lengths discussing different designs that we have considered before we landed at the sunburst map, but not sure the reviews are the right place for it :) The question is all about efficiency and easiness of use, in all senses.

Information

OS X 10.10 or later, 64-bit processor

Macworld The Best Mac Hard Drives For 2018

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Other World Computing

• Family Sharing

  With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.