best external hard drive compatible with mac and pc

While the desktop drive provides a far higher capacity, they also require more cables, weigh more, and generally may not be quite as shock resistant as a portable hard drive that’s designed to take a few more bumps, even when on. Having more storage allows you to keep more historical files should you need them or use the same drive to backup additional PCs. If you have 1TB of storage in your PC, 2TB will allow you to make a full backup while keeping historical backups on the same drive. So how much do you need? We recommend a backup drive at least twice as large as the total capacity of your PC. The best “value” are typically for the largest hard drives as you can see, but it brings considerably higher prices and not everyone needs that much capacity. It’s almost equally as bad on the WD Elements Portable drive.

You’re paying more than twice as much for the lowest-capacity drive versus the next step up. You can see that below where we compare the popular WD Elements desktop hard drive’s available capacities and prices. We’ve been doing this comparison for years and it’s always been the worst value. In fact, dollar for dollar, cheaper low-capacity drives are most often the worst deal historically. However, while you might think that the lowest-cost drive provides the most value, it often doesn’t. Capacity and priceįor most consumers, the main shopping concerns for external storage are capacity and price. Yes, USB4 will provide the same massive throughput as Thunderbolt 3 at lower prices eventually, and likely far more products too.

Regardless of the size, all T7 Shields boast USB 3.2 10Gbps implementation allowing for 10Gbps transfer speeds which gives it the edge over many other external drives on the market today. Thankfully, if you don’t need so much storage, you can simply purchase our previous best pick 1TB or 2TB versions for less. While the 4TB model is capable of handling the largest end-user data sets, it is also a bit pricey. (Mind you, the Shield can still be secured with password protection.) Whereas the T7’s predecessor, the Samsung Touch, distinguished itself with a fingerprint reader for data security, the Shield models lean in to physical protection, with IP65 ratings against particulate matter and water spray, making them good performance drives for out in the field. Now upgraded to a 4TB capacity from the previous 1TB and 2TB versions, Samsung has continued with their excellent track record of speed and durability with their T7 drives. We’re fans of the original Samsung T7 Shield, and now we’re ever bigger fans of the follow-up, larger capacity 4TB version of the T7 Shield.

Best external hard drive compatible with mac and pc