5 best portable external storage drives (2021): solid state drives, hard drives, rugged

If you are running Laptops have insufficient storage space, need to back up data, or store a backlog of videos to be edited one day (I swear), an external hard drive can solve your problem. The problem is, there are hundreds of drive options, from very cheap to very expensive-which one is right for your needs? We have tested dozens of hard drives for different use cases to find the most suitable portable hard drive for your workflow.

Be sure to check out our other guidelines, including How to backup and move your photos between services, How to backup your digital life, with How to backup your iPhone.

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Best for backup

I know this guide is for portable Hard drives, this is definitely not portable, but please be patient. For incremental backups, we recommend, Portability is not your top priority. Usually, your backup software will run overnight, so speed is not an important factor. This is why the first drive I recommend is Western Digital Element.

For more than ten years, I have been using some variations of the WD Elements desktop hard drive to incrementally back up my data. They are large and require external power, but these are the cheapest and most reliable drives I have used. Also check the price of larger drives; sometimes, you can get 6 TB or even 8 TB drives for very little money.

Other excellent backup drives:

• Seagate Expansion Desktop Hard Drive 4 TB ($95): Seagate is another reliable hard drive manufacturer. There is never any harm in having more backups. If you really want multiple backups, use drives of different brands, as this will reduce the chance of both failing at the same time.
• Western Digital Elements 4-TB portable hard drive ($105): If you don’t mind spending a little more money, you can get the same size drive in a more portable form factor that does not require an external power supply. The 4 TB model usually sells for less than $100.

Best portable drive

These Crucial hard drives are my favorite portable hard drives. They are reasonably priced (for portable SSDs) and very fast. The only drive with a faster read speed I tested is the Samsung T7 (see below), which is more than $90 more expensive. They are also very lightweight, which means they are perfect for you to use when you are out of work. I use one to store video clips, and it is fast enough to edit them directly from the disk. The only disadvantage is the plastic structure. Don’t expect it to withstand multiple drops.

Best for speed

If money is not an issue and you only care about speed, then these portable drives from Samsung will beat all the other devices I have tested. They are lightweight, but have a metal shell, making them quite indestructible. The problem is the price. The cost per GB is the highest in this guide.If you want to be portable with Hurry, you have to pay.

Another quick option: Seagate One-click SSD (2 TB 300 USD) In our speed test, Samsung T7 followed closely behind, and the price was slightly cheaper.

Best Go-Anywhere Drive

If you need a drive that can stand the test of life backpack or camera bag, Get wet or drop onto a hard surface, the OWC drive is your best choice. It is difficult to choose a winner here because there are many reliable choices, but OWC’s Elektron drive beats other drives by a small margin in the benchmark test. I also like that you can replace the drive inside the aluminum housing (which is easy to unscrew), which means that after two years, you can pick up a faster bare SSD and put it in Elektron.

Another non-destructive drive: I really like Sabrent’s Rocket Nano SSD (1 TB 159 USD). It is smaller than the above OWC and slightly faster, but it has two disadvantages. The first is that it will become very hot. If you try to use it on your legs, it can be very uncomfortable. Another problem is that sometimes my PC recognition speed is very slow. I can’t find a pattern in this area; sometimes it appears immediately, sometimes it takes a few minutes. If these things don’t bother you, this drive is small, inexpensive, and comes with a padded rubber case.

Best cushion driver

For those who need to make backups on site (such as photographers and videographers), the above portable drive is a reliable solution. However, if you want more comfort, this LaCie cushioned drive has long been a favorite of travelers. LaCie offers an SSD version and a traditional rotary drive version.If speed is not an issue, like every night backup, then Cheaper rotary drives more meaningful. If you are actually taking a photo or backing up in a similar situation that needs to happen quickly, then the SSD version is what you want.

Hard drive buying advice

Choosing the right hard drive boils down to balancing three things: speed, size, with price. If you are doing nightly backups, speed and size may not matter. Choose the cheapest drive you can find-to a certain extent. Drives don’t last forever, but some drives definitely last longer than others. I recommend sticking to well-known brands with a good reputation, such as Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, and other brands introduced here.This is partly based on experience and partly on drive failure data owned by Backblaze Has been published for many yearsBackblaze uses a large number of hard drives to back up customer data, and its report is worth reading. The point is simple: stick to names you know.

If speed beats price, then you want to look at solid state drives. SSDs not only have a speed advantage, but they also lack moving parts, which means they can withstand bumps and drops during the journey better than rotating drives. The disadvantage is that they wear out faster. Each write operation to an SSD (that is, when you save something to it) slightly reduces the individual NAND units that make up the drive, which wears out faster than a rotating drive. How fast depends on how you use it. In other words, I have several SSDs that have been in use for more than 5 years, and during that time I have been using them for daily backups. None of them encountered any problems.

When do you need an SSD instead of a rotating drive? The answer is almost always-if you can afford it. But especially for any drives you use frequently: your main startup drive, external drives for editing documents, and even for backups (if you need them to happen quickly).

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