Any portable hard drive, SSD or even a flash drive will let you transport, store and backup files. But getting the best external hard drive or best external SSD for your storage needs is important. A portable hard drive or SSD is a do-it-all storage wallet, a pocketable device that can carry huge files (or lots of small ones) between PCs, Macs and phones, back up essential data, offload footage from your DSLR or
drone while on the go, and more.
But with a slew of external drives available, how do you know which is the right external drive to buy? Should you opt for a faster, more rugged (and more expensive) external SSD instead of a portable hard drive made up of comparatively fragile spinning platters? To help you pick the best portable external drive for your needs, we meticulously test and review dozens of drives as they become available and publish our list of specific recommendations of the best portable SSDs and hard drives on this page.
Before we get to the picks , there are a few important things to think about, whether you need a drive for work, school or home use. Consider how rugged your drive needs to be, how much storage capacity you need, and what connections will be available in places where you’ll want to plug in your drive. A super-fast drive at home won’t be useful if you can’t plug it in at work or school.
If you’re curious about the kinds of speed and features that will be available with cutting-edge and future external drives, check out Everything We Know About USB 4.0.
When shopping for an external drive or SSD, consider the following:
- Portable Hard Drive or SSD? Drives that have spinning storage platters inside are very affordable, with 1TB models often selling for under $50 (£40). But they’re also much slower and more fragile than solid-state drives. If you don’t need terabytes of storage and you often travel with your drive, a portable SSD is worth paying extra for. A portable SSD will also be much faster at reading and writing lots of data. But if you need cavernous amounts of external storage, a hard drive is a better option for most, as multi-terabyte external SSDs sell for several hundred dollars, but 4TB portable hard drives can sell for under $100 (£90).
- Don’t Use a Portable Hard Drive as Your Only Backup. Portable hard drives are made up of spinning glass or metal platters, making them a poor choice as a primary backup of your data–especially if you carry them around. Portable SSDs are better here, but you should still keep your irreplacable data backed up on a desktop drive and / or on a cloud service. Because hardware failure is always possible, and portable drives are often small enough to lose or leave behind by accident.
- You Can Save Money By Making Your Own Portable SSD. If you’re even a little tech savvy, you can pick up an external SSD enclosure and use an old M.2 drive you might have around from a laptop or desktop upgrade, or buy one that you see on sale. We’ve detailed how to build your external SSD here. Also note that a recent Silverstone Raven SSD enclosure works with both SATA and NVMe drives. So if you opt for that model, you’ll have far more drive options, and you could upgrade later to a speedier drive.
Best External Hard Drives and Portable SSDs You Can Buy Today
