The 5 Best Portable External Hard Drives

You don't need to know anything about computers to shop for external hard drives. At least not with our help. If some of the jargon went over your head, this will help walk you through the different hard drive types, sizes, and styles we are talking about.

Hard Drive Disks (HDD): This is the older form of hard drive. HDDs are cost effective and great for long-term storage. If you're looking to store a bulk without accessing them frequently, the HDD can still be a great choice.

Solid State Drives (SSD): SSDs have faster read and write speeds than HDDs. This makes them great for gaming, or if you frequently needing access to the content on the hard drive. They tend to be lighter and have smaller form factor than HDDs. They are also more physically durable than HDDs. These factors often make SSD the better portable pick, but the price per gigabyte of storage will be higher than an HDD.

Storage Space: These days, one terabyte of storage is a pretty standard starting place for both HDD and SSD drives. From there, most of them go up to around five TB, although you can find some HDD drives that hold more than that. If you watch 4K files, work in video editing, or download video games, you know how quickly a a terabyte drive can fill up.

Formatting: By default, most hard drives will be pre-formatted to Windows. Some, like the SanDisk above, are formatted to Mac by default, but most aren't. Many drives can be reformatted to be compatible with MacOS and other operating systems (Linux, various mobile OS), but some can't. It really just depends on the manufacturer. So if you have a Mac it's always worth checking compatibility before buying a portable external hard drive.