The Best External Hard Drives of 2018. How an external drive connects to your PC or Mac is second only to the type of storage mechanism it uses in determining how fast you'll be able to access. ) So if you need a portable hard drive with respectable storage capacity at a reasonable price, you’ll most likely pick a laptop-class drive with a 2.5″ hard drive mechanism inside.

Search Wirecutter For: Search Reviews for the real world Browse Close • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Browse Close • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •. If the 4 TB My Book is out of stock or the price goes up, is a great and dependable alternative. The Elements is about as fast as our top pick: In our tests, its average write speed was 7.7 MB/s slower, and it took about 5 seconds longer to transfer a Blu-ray film, but those differences were within the margin of error. At this writing, it costs only 46¢ more per terabyte, but prices fluctuate; if you find the Elements for less than the My Book, it’s a better buy. This model lacks backup software, though, and it has a shorter, two-year warranty. If you’re not backing up the important documents and photos on your computer, you should start. Your computer’s internal drive will stop working someday, and unless your data is backed up, it’ll be gone forever.

Fortunately, backing up your data is easy, and getting started takes only a few minutes: Read our advice and that will back up your files automatically both to an external hard drive and the cloud. Download vpn for mac os x. Just backing up to one or the other isn’t enough; having both on-site and ensures that your data stays safe from localized threats such as fire, theft, or natural disaster, as well as Internet outages or disruptions to the cloud backup provider. A desktop external hard drive is a great local backup for a computer that mostly stays parked on a desk.

You should consider replacing your backup drives between the third and sixth year of use. If your drive dies and you have a cloud backup, you won’t lose data, but restoring from the cloud will take a very long time.

According to, hard drives are most likely to fail either within the first 18 months of use or after three years. About 5 percent of drives fail in the first 18 months of use, with the failure rate dipping to about 1.5 percent for another 18 months. At three years of service, the failure rate jumps to almost 12 percent. At four years, the failure rate is 20 percent. Judging from five years of data, Backblaze estimates that more than half of hard drives will last six years. If you spend most of your time working at one desk, you should get a desktop external drive. But if you frequently move between locations, a is the better choice.

They’re more expensive per terabyte than bigger desktop models, and they’re a bit slower, but portable hard drives are smaller and lighter than desktop drives and don’t need an additional power adapter. They’re also designed to withstand a little more abuse (although one bump can still lead to failure).