The Best External Hard Drives of 2. Storage has never been cheaper. For as little as $5. Did your internal drive get fried? No problem—if your data is backed up to an external drive that's stashed somewhere safe. In the ancient days of personal. This versatile external RAID enclosure features a built-in hardware RAID controller. External USB Slim DVD +/- RW Optical Drive is a plug and play disc. Electronics: See all 19,641 items. Shop External Hard Drives from Seagate, Western Digital & more! We offer the best prices, fast shipping & top-rated customer service at Newegg.com. The half-inch thin 2TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim is the best portable hard drive, with the best combination of portability, speed, reliability, and price. RAID (originally redundant array of inexpensive disks, now commonly redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines. That's enough to house more than 7. MP3s or photos, or more than 2. Every computer out there, from mega- huge desktop towers to budget- price Windows tablets, can connect to at least one hard drive, with no complex installation required. And if you're lucky enough to have multiple I/O ports, you can hook up many more. There's a lot to consider—desktop- or laptop- class, traditional spinning or solid- state drive (SSD) are only a couple of factors. Here's everything you need to consider when shopping for an external hard drive. Hard Drive Types. There are two types of external drives. Desktop- class drives, with 3. They are designed to stay in one place, typically on your desk at home or at the office. If you're buying a desktop- class drive for video or lots of file transfers, look for one with a built- in fan, as the extra cooling will extend the drive's life expectancy. Notebook- class (aka pocket or portable) hard drives are usually 2. You can slip a 2. Desktop- class models currently top out at 8 terabytes (TB) per mechanism, but some drive manufacturers put two to four mechanisms into a chassis for more storage (for example, two 4. TB drives for a total of 8. TB of storage). Notebook- class drives come in capacities up to 4. TB, but capacities from 5. GB to 2. TB are most common. A word about multiple drives: You can increase capacity, speed, or data protection by buying an external RAID array, but multiple drives add expense and (some) complexity. Once you connect a single- volume external RAID array to your PC or Mac, it will show up and act as any other external drive. After that, it can become more complex. You should consider a drive with support for RAID levels 1, 5, or 1. There are other RAID levels for speed and capacity, and both software and hardware RAID implementations. Read our excellent primer, RAID Levels Explained, for a more in- depth explanation. External SSDs are found mostly in the notebook- class form factor. They're currently limited to smaller capacities, typically in the 6. GB to 5. 12. GB range, though they top out at 2. TB. Thunderbolt, USB 3. USB- C, and USB 3. ![]() ![]() SSDs are available now, but they are much more expensive than spinning hard drives: For example, a simple 1. TB USB 3. 0 (spinning) hard drive goes for about $5. TB SSD using USB 3. Want to know more about how hard drives and SSDs compare? CNET editor Dong Ngo rounds up current top external hard drives best used for backup purposes.HDD: What's the Difference? Input, Need Input. External drives connect to PCs and Macs via their external cables. USB 2. 0/3. 0 ports are almost always present; others can include Fire. Wire (4. 00 and 8. SATA (e. SATA), or newer connectors like USB- C or Thunderbolt 3. USB 3. 0 provides fast transfer speeds and a minimum of fuss, since almost all desktop and laptop PCs come with USB ports. USB- C is a newer standard, supported using the smaller USB- C connector, and is still fairly uncommon to find on drives. It has the same theoretical speed as the original Thunderbolt (1. Gbps), but is governed by the same group of companies that developed the other formats of USB. The external drives we've reviewed all have USB connectivity, a good thing since even detachable- hybrid tablets have at least one USB 2. Mbps throughput. Less common, but ostensibly speedier, is the Fire. Wire port, in both 4. Mbps and 8. 00. Mbps formats. Fire. Wire 4. 00 and 8. FW4. 00 or FW8. 00 connectors on the ends of those cables. Fire. Wire can be daisy- chained; you can connect several drives or devices up to a single Fire. Wire port when you connect them together first. The next fastest interface you'll see in an external hard drive is e. SATA, which is theoretically capable of 3. Gbps (3,0. 00. Mbps), an order of magnitude faster than USB 2. While e. SATA is fast, it does not provide power over the connector cable and will require either a USB cable for power, a combined USB/e. SATA cable (and connector), or an external AC adapter. Drives that are e. SATA compatible are on the way out now that Thunderbolt and USB have replaced e. SATA in most applications. In terms of interface, USB 3. SATA, with a 5. Gbps theoretical throughput. USB 3. 0 has the benefit of being backward- compatible with USB 2. USB 2. 0 ports, but will transfer but at the slower USB 2. You can find drives with multiple ports (for example, a triple interface drive with USB 2. Fire. Wire 8. 00, and e. SATA), though you'll still only be able to connect a single drive to a single computer, and each additional interface adds to the drive's complexity and cost. USB- C uses smaller plugs and jacks compared with traditional USB, but it can use compatible hardware. A handful of USB memory sticks and hard drives are currently available with both USB 3. USB- C support via two separate connectors. Optional adapters will let you use older USB drives with PCs with newer USB- C ports. All About Thunderbolt. One of the outlying interconnect technologies is Thunderbolt (formerly known as Light Peak), which was developed by Intel and first championed by Apple. Thunderbolt was originally designed as a speedy optical link (using fiber optics), but the practicality of adding a new connector to existing systems dictated that the shipping version works with copper cables and existing connectors. Visually (but not electrically) identical to the Mini Display. Port connector, the Thunderbolt interface can drive both monitors and external hard drives. As with Fire. Wire, Thunderbolt devices can be daisy- chained together to work with one connector on a laptop or desktop, and the interface can be used to boot a Mac (USB boot drives may not work on some Macs). Best of all, the Thunderbolt 2 interface has a faster theoretical throughput: up to 2. GBps. Thunderbolt is becoming a common standard in professional- grade systems from manufacturers as diverse as Apple, Dell, and HP. We see Thunderbolt as a niche player, mainly in higher- end desktop and mobile workstations, where you need to transfer a lot of data quickly. Its newest iteration is Thunderbolt 3. It uses the same connector and cables as USB- C and doubles the throughput ceiling to 4. Gbps, but both the external drive and your computer must be Thunderbolt 3–compatible to get the most out of this new interface. How Important Is Drive Speed? While a 7,2. 00rpm drive is inherently faster than a 5,4. But if you're limited to USB 2. Fire. Wire 4. 00/8. I would trade speed for capacity and get the largest 5,4. USB 2. 0 and Fire. Wire 8. 00 are older interfaces that work fine with a 5,4. If all- out speed is your goal, multiple drives (7,2. SSD) over Thunderbolt 3 is the fastest (and most costly), with a single SSD connected via Thunderbolt 1/2 or USB 3. Finally, there are some other differentiators to consider. Color and design: You can buy different colored drives for each family member, for example. Included software is a factor if you don't already have a backup plan. If you're simply using the drive as an extra storage container, or if you're using the backup software built into Windows or Mac OS, the software bundled with the drive isn't as important. Warranty is also a big factor in our ratings: Drives can and will fail on you. That cheap drive you found on a deal site may only come with a one- year warranty. Look for a three- or five- year warranty if you're hard on your drives. To get you started toward the right add- on backup/storage solution, below are 1. For more options, take a look at our lists of the best network- attached storage (NAS) drives and cloud storage services. FEATURED IN THIS ROUNDUP.
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