The best external hard drives in 2021

Having one of the best external hard drives will make your digital life easier, for many reasons. 

If you have more than one computer at home, but a slow network, one of the best external hard drives will make it quick and easy to transfer large files from one machine to another. 

If you need to work on large files on both your workplace computer and your home computer, then one of the best external hard drives in your pocket or backpack will give you continuous access.

If you need to back up your computer regularly, one of the larger, HDD-based external hard drives here will do the trick. If you want to create a second backup for peace of mind, and keep that in a separate location, an SSD-based drive will be perfect.

But these aren’t the slow, heavy external drives that you may remember from a few years ago. Some of these drives, especially the smaller SSD ones, have eye-catching designs and colors that approach being fashionable. 

Every model here, whether based on a traditional spinning HDD or a faster solid-state SSD, uses at least the USB 3.0 standard, which offers read and write speeds many times faster than the old USB 2.0 drives. 

Many of the best external hard drives use the even faster USB 3.1 and 3.2 standards, each of which is twice as fast as the one before it, and one drive sports the super-speedy Thunderbolt 3 standard.

What are the best external hard drives?

According to our own tests, the best non-portable external hard drive is the WD My Book (model number WDBBGB), which offers the best balance of cost, capacity and other features for your needs. The drive works only while plugged in to a power outlet, but it’s fast and there are tons of capacity options all the way up to 18TB.

If you want something you can carry with you, the best portable external hard drive is the G-Technology ArmorATD. It boasts heavy-duty protection against shock, falls, water, dust and crushing. We found that it’s also speedy for a portable hard drive.

If you’re willing to pay a premium for a faster SSD, the best portable SSD hard drive for you is the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD (model number SDSSDE80). It’s designed inside and out to easily use anywhere, and there’s a newer model that offers twice the speed.

The best external hard drives you can buy today

It may be shaped like a monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but our tests found that the WD My Book is the best external hard drive for the money. It offers hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption and WD Backup software, and it gives you 4TB of HDD space for about $100. Plus, capacities up to 18TB are available.

The My Book might not be the latest and greatest in terms of drive technology, but it makes the absolute most of tried-and-true methods — and will only cost you pennies per gigabyte. Sure, it’s on the bulky side, and it has to be plugged into a power outlet. But if speed and portability aren’t of utmost importance, this is storage peace of mind you can’t afford not to have.

Designed to be rugged, the G-Technology ArmorATD portable hard drive (HDD, not SSD) boasts three-tier shock resistance, with internal shock mounts, an aluminum enclosure, and a removable rubber bumper for additional drop protection; it’s also resistant to rain, dust, and crushing (up to 1,000 pounds). 

The 2TB and 4TB models are both sized to be easily portable, and include a USB Type-A adapter for use with their USB Type-C interface, so they should work with nearly every computer.

We tested the 2TB and 4TB capacities; neither was notably fast (though the 2TB is rated for marginally higher speeds), and the drive comes with no file management software. But factor in the price and one of these drives could be a reasonable choice if you and your data into unpredictable territory.

No matter what you want from the best external hard drive, the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD delivers it. 

Convenient design? It’s small and light enough to fit in your hand but not get lost in your pocket or bag. Suave looks? Its rounded corners, black-and-red coloration, delicately pockmarked front and soft-touch back give it an appearance and feel that are both thoroughly modern and refreshingly classic.

Ok, how about speed? The USB 3.1 version of the Extreme Pro Portable SSD is rated for sequential reads of 1,050MBps, and in our own performance tests, it routinely came out at or near the top of the rankings. The SanDisk Secure Access application applies general encryption, too.

The drive is a shade expensive, and the integrated carrying loop is too big to easily fit on a standard keychain. Otherwise, this is an excellent storage device that’s ideal for heavy everyday use.

Since we tested the Extreme Pro Portable SSD, SanDisk has released a second version that integrates USB 3.2 to get speeds of up to 2,000Mbps but looks exactly the same as its predecessor. (We’ll be testing it soon.) The newer version costs twice as much, but if super-fast reads are your game, then go for it.

The Adata SE800 External SSD Ultra Fast measures just 2.8 x 1.7 x 0.4 inches and weighs 1.4 ounces and is rated for IP68 protection against dust and 30 minutes of submersion in 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) of water. 

It meets the MIL-STD-810G 516.6 standard for impact resistance when dropped from 4 feet (1.22 meters). You can use either a USB Type-A or a Type-C cable to connect this Type-C drive to your computer.

We didn’t quite see the drive’s 1,000MBps-rated speeds in our tests, but the drive proved fast anyway. It’s also pretty affordable, with the 1TB version we tested available online for under $130, and the 512GB version findable for about $80. 

Those two capacities are your only options, and there’s no pre-installed software, but the SE800 is otherwise an outstanding value that lives up to the promise of its name, whether compared with the noticeably slower Adata SC685 or many other smaller drives on the market.

If your computer has a Thunderbolt 3 port and if money is (more or less) no object, the Samsung X5 Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD is the best external hard drive for you. 

It’s rated for stratospheric speeds (2,800 MBps read, 2,300 MBps write), and it delivered on them in our tests. It’s larger and heavier than a typical external SSD, but sportscar stylish, with a glossy exterior, sloping lines, and a fiery-red undercarriage.

The catches? The Samsung X5’s performance was inconsistent, veering between mind-blowing and merely above average (and it did not top every test). If you don’t have Thunderbolt 3 (which uses the same ports as USB-C), you won’t see all it can do. 

And, yikes, is this drive expensive, starting at $200 for 500GB and going up to $600 for the 2TB configuration. You can save money on other drives that will still be darn fast, so the X5 won’t be worth it for most people. But there’s no better choice if you want the bleeding edge and are willing to pay for it.

The WD My Passport SSD with USB 3.2 doesn’t look like its travel-enabling namesake, the My Passport Go, but it’s all ready to go places. It’s small (3.9x 2.2x 0.4 inches) and attractive, with its shiny ridged surface and choice of five snazzy colors (blue, gold, gray, red, and silver). 

The My Passport SSD’s software application gives you access to My Cloud Home Storage and lets you download other WD utilities. Best of all, it’s fast: The My Passport zoomed through all of our performance tests, invariably showing up somewhere in the winner’s circle for each.

With a price per gigabyte of $0.19, the 1TB model is one of the most expensive drives we tested. And its included USB Type-C cable is exceedingly short: 6.5 inches, which makes using this drive a bit of a hassle on either laptop or desktop computers. (A Type-A adapter comes in the package to ensure the drive will work with a wide variety of systems.) But these are small nitpicks that don’t detract from one of the best external hard drives around.

The Samsung Portable SSD T7 looks like the T5, with its rectangular figure adorned by rounded corners, though it’s a little bigger and heavier and its software is identical. It comes in somewhat more exciting color choices, with Indigo Blue, Titan Gray, and Metallic Red variations available for its 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. 

The biggest difference is that Samsung rates the drive at 1,050 MBps, and we saw much higher results in our tests. It completed our file copy test 20 seconds faster, for example.

But with a cost of $0.23 per gigabyte, this is one of the most expensive drives we’ve seen (though you may be able to find it online for cheaper). If you care more about the Samsung name, the drive’s design, and the speed than you do about value, the T7 delivers more than enough to appreciate and justify itself.

Rated for 540 MBps (read) and 500 MBps (write), the Seagate BarraCuda Fast SSD is a midprice portable SSD that doesn’t dishonor its name. In most of our performance tests, its results were at the top edge of the midrange. 

It looks cool, too: a svelte, rectangular slab of black metal with a raised square in the center, beneath which a flash of green may be glimpsed. (This lights up in a satisfying sci-fi way when the drive is connected.)

Like other Seagate drives, it’s pretty bare-bones in terms of software, but includes that two-month membership to the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan. And the BarraCuda Fast isn’t the cheapest USB 3.0 drive out there: If raw space is all you’re concerned with, you can do better. 

But factoring together the storage space, speed, and visual spark, the BarraCuda Fast SSD gives you quite a bit for your money.

The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch is a portable HDD-based external hard drive for people who care at least as much about how their drive looks as how it functions (and maybe more). 

It blends the traditional boxy look of a hard drive with a more contemporary, yet still restrained, aesthetic comprising solid-color sides and back with a carpeted-feeling front panel. (A color-coordinated 19.3-inch USB Type-A cable is included for connecting to your computer, as is a Type-C adapter.)

The software is all the same as with the Backup Plus Portable, though in many cases this drive’s performance was a little better in our tests. The Backup Plus Ultra Touch’s two capacity options are highly affordable, so you can adopt the drive’s style without spending like it’s going out of style.

Despite measuring only 4.5 x3.2 x 0.8 inches — only slightly larger than a deck of cards — the HDD-based Seagate Backup Plus Portable packs either 4TB or 5TB of storage. (Our review unit was the former.) 

After your drive is registered, you can download Toolkit to enable automatic file backups or Mylio, for organizing your photos. (A two-month membership to the Adobe CC Photography Plan, which includes Lightroom and Photoshop for organizing and editing your photos, is provided as well.)

But with square corners and an antiquated, two-tone design, the drive isn’t a looker. And it finished near the bottom of all of our performance tests. 

That’s been the thing about spinning hard drives (HDDs) for a decade: You pay for the cheap space with all the time you won’t save. But if you need a spacious drive, but don’t mind if it’s simple and slow, too, the Backup Plus Portable is not a terrible choice.

How to choose the best external hard drive for you

Do you care more about speed, capacity, or price? If it’s the first, SSDs store data in flash memory rather than on spinning platters the way traditional hard drives do and thus operate a whole lot faster. The interface can also make a difference; Thunderbolt 3 will be a lot faster than USB, for example.

For capacity, traditional hard drives (HDDs) offer a lot more options, but SSDs are generally able to house the same amount of storage in a smaller amount of space.

As for price, it’s possible to find huge hard drives (think 4TB) for $100 or less. SSDs are nowhere near that inexpensive, but smaller drives (1-2TB) can be found from just over $100 to $200 or more.

If a drive’s looks matter to you, you’ll definitely have choices. Manufacturers these days frequently market portable drives as fashion accessories, selling them in various sizes, shapes, and colors.

How we test external hard drives

We hooked up each external hard drive drive to a current-generation Dell XPS 17 laptop, using the best connection interface available to that drive, always in the same port, to minimize performance differentials. 

Then we ran the same series of synthetic and real-world tests on the drives in the same order, so every drive would function as much like the others as possible. Our test suite comprised:

• BlackMagic Disk Speed Test 3.2.1 (5GB stress loads)
• CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 (8GB workloads, single-thread sequential read and write, queue depths of 1 and 8)
• PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark
• Future File Transfer Test (25GB)

Finally, we delve into the drives’ technology, features, aesthetics, cables and adapters, and other characteristics to get a broader picture of what the drives offer. Where necessary, we run other tests on the drives’ unique features to see how well they worked under real-life conditions and whether they’re likely to benefit you.