Portable Slim Usb3.0 Sata Exteranal Odd/hdd Device For Mac
Search Wirecutter For: Search Reviews for the real world Browse Close. Browse Close. 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. Just backing up to one or the other isn’t enough; having both onsite and cloud backups 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 portable hard drive is a great local backup for a computer you take from your house to the coffee shop, on business trips, or on vacations.
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, and the failure rate lowers to about 1.5 percent for another 18 months.
At three years of service, the failure rate jumps to almost 12 percent. At the four year mark, the failure rate is 20 percent.
Based on five years of data, Backblaze estimated that more than half of hard drives will last six years. You should consider replacing your backup drives between the third and sixth year of use. If you frequently move between different locations and need a drive to keep in your bag and use to back up photos and other data while you’re traveling, you should get a portable external drive like the ones we recommend in this guide. But if you spend most of your time working from one desk, a is the better choice. They’re less expensive per terabyte and a bit faster than portable drives, but desktop external hard drives are bigger and heavier than portable ones and require an additional power adapter. And although one bump can still lead to failure, portable hard drives are designed to withstand a little more abuse than desktop hard drives.
If you can afford to pay around three times more for a smaller, lighter, more durable and much faster portable drive with hardware encryption, we recommend a. How we picked. Ideally, a portable hard drive is something you don’t notice much. It should sit on your desk, quietly storing and backing up your data.
And if you want to throw it in your bag (carefully), that shouldn’t be a problem. These are the features you should look for in a portable hard drive, in rough order of importance:. Reliability: Although reliability is the most important factor for any storage device, solid information on reliability can be hard to come. Only three companies still manufacture hard drives—Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba—and all of them make reliable hard drives. But all hard drives die. While the vast majority of drives from these manufacturers will be fine until you upgrade to a faster, more spacious drive in a few years, it’s still possible to buy a bad egg that will die too soon. Build quality: Your portable hard drive should be able to withstand normal wear and tear from being handled and thrown into your bag often.
Rugged portable drives are bulkier and more expensive than the portable drives we recommend for most people. (You can read more about rugged drives in.). Physical size and weight: The smaller and lighter, the better. Your portable hard drive should also draw all the power it needs from the USB port, no power adapter necessary. Speed: Even though portable hard drives are generally slower than their desktop brethren, speed is still important. You’re more likely to use a portable drive to transfer large files between different computers, so a faster drive will save you time. We considered only those drives with USB 3.0 connections.
Anything faster isn’t necessary for hard drives, because they’re limited by disk speed, not the USB interface. Price: We found that most people buy 2 TB and 4 TB drives by looking at Amazon reviews for our top picks. While a higher-capacity drive is more cost-effective per terabyte, 4 TB portable hard drives cost nearly twice as expensive as 2 TB drives and supply more storage than most people need. Since many portable drives nowadays have similar performance, lower-cost options are better. Capacity: We recommend getting the largest capacity you can afford right now because you’ll amass more data over time and larger drives generally have a better price-per-terabyte value. We focused on 2 TB drives because of their balance of value and total cost.
We also have a 4 TB pick for people who need more portable storage and don’t mind the larger size. Warranty and customer service: A good warranty is important in case you get a lemon.
While the majority of portable hard drives we tested have two-year warranties, a couple have three-year warranties. Responsive customer service is important, too, in case you have trouble backing up your data.
Backup software: While backup software is a nice perk, you can find lots of free alternatives and other. If you don’t need the extra features provided by the software, it’s not worth the time and effort to set it up on every computer you use. Dragging and dropping files works just fine for manual backups, and your OS’s built-in backup utility suffices for automatic ones. How we tested.
For our 2018 update, we narrowed down our list of contenders by price and capacity and tested six 2 TB models and one 4 TB model. For each portable hard drive, we ran HD Tune Pro, a benchmarking program that tests sequential transfer speeds and random access time across the entire disk. You can read a more in-depth explanation of the program at the. We also timed the file transfer of a 45.5 GB rip of a Blu-ray movie from start to finish, running each transfer three times and determining the average to rule out performance hiccups.
Finally, we timed how long it took each external hard drive to back up 38.5 GB to on a 2016 MacBook Pro. To spot any widespread reliability issues, we read through Amazon reviews for each of the drives we tested and counted the number of reported drive failures. This method has shortcomings. For one, people are more likely to post a review when they have a problem.
Portable Slim Usb 3.0 Sata External Odd/hdd Device For Mac Download
Also, because of the limited information available in some reviews, it can be hard to differentiate between hardware failures and software issues or user errors that could cause problems with a drive. But this approach is the best we have for now. We also looked at Backblaze’s, which are based on more than 90,000 drives used in its cloud backup servers. Backup servers are a very different environment than a box on your desk—bare drives in servers are accessed more often and are subject to more vibrations and more heat; drives in enclosures have more potential points of failure between the USB connector and the USB-to-SATA logic board.
The hard drives Backblaze uses are desktop hard drives, not portable hard drives, with some drives pulled from external enclosures. Even so, the Backblaze study is the largest, most recent sample of hard drive failures we have access to, and it’s always a fascinating read. Our pick: 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim. The is the best portable hard drive for most people because it’s reliable.
It’s lighter and smaller than most of the other hard drives we tested, was consistently faster than most of the competition in our tests, and is one of the least expensive drives per terabyte we tested. The Slim also comes with handy backup software. The Slim has been one of our picks since April 2014 because it continues to be the most reliable drive (based on the largest sample of Amazon reviews) while still providing fast performance. In May 2018, we recorded 249 failure reports out of 2,701 user reviews for the 2 TB model, giving the Slim a 9-percent reported failure rate—that’s pretty good for a drive that’s been around for four years, since drive failure rates start going up after three.
During our years of testing, we’ve found that reported failure rates below 10 percent aren’t cause for concern. Multiple Wirecutter staffers have been using the Seagate Backup Plus Slim for all kinds of things with few to no issues. The 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim was one of the fastest portable hard drives we tested at creating a backup with Time Machine. Shorter bars indicate better performance.
The Slim was roughly as fast as the competition at reading and writing Blu-ray video, and it was even faster in our Time Machine testing. It was firmly in the middle of the pack for our Blu-ray testing, reading and writing our files in 6 minutes and 33 seconds, and it measured as one of the fastest portable hard drives we tested with Time Machine, writing 38.5 GB to our MacBook Pro in 24 minutes and 9 seconds.
The 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim gave us the best combination of HD Tune read and write speeds. The Toshiba models we tested had faster read speeds, but their write speeds were low and their performance inconsistent. Longer bars indicate better performance.
In HD Tune write testing, the Slim was the fastest portable hard drive we tested, measuring 86.4 MB/s, although its margin of victory fell within the margin of error of our measurements of other portable hard drives’ speeds. Its HD Tune read speed, 88.1 MB/s, was one of the fastest speeds we tested.
The Seagate Backup Plus Slim’s sturdy plastic case doesn’t flex or creak under pressure like many other drives do. It also stands up well to light scratches from keys—only the glossy black sides dinged up in our tests. Although our pick will hold up well to normal bag friction, it isn’t rated to survive any significant shocks. We recommend the 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim because it’s less expensive per terabyte than the 1 TB model and it’s the highest capacity option the Slim has. (If you need more space, consider the.) Even if you have only a terabyte of data right now, your needs will expand over the drive’s lifespan, and having room to grow is better than buying multiple drives and spending more in the long run. The Backup Plus Slim was on the cheaper end of the portable hard drives we tested; while the WD My Passport and WD Elements cost about the same, everything else cost at least $2.50 more per TB.
Seagate’s software allows you to back up your PC, mobile devices, and social media. The user-friendly Seagate Dashboard interface lets you back up your PC, mobile devices, and social media, or it can restore from an existing backup. The Seagate Mobile Backup app for iOS and Android also backs up contacts, messages, photos, and other data from your smartphone to your hard drive via Wi-Fi or your phone’s data connection as long as the drive is plugged into a computer running the Dashboard software. The Backup Plus Slim’s USB connection can be wobbly, so be sure to unplug the cord before transporting the drive. Photo: Daniela Gorny The Seagate Backup Plus Slim comes with a two-year warranty—Western Digital, Seagate’s biggest competitor, usually provides three-year warranties—and our perusal of Amazon reviews turned up more complaints about Seagate’s customer service than about WD’s. However, a two-year warranty should be sufficient, and several drives we’ve tested have only one-year warranties, so we don’t think this is a dealbreaker. Seagate also sells, but we’ve seen several reviewers complain about long waits and a lack of communication from Seagate customer service.
Instead, we recommend taking 15 minutes to that sends your files to an external drive and encrypted cloud storage without any regular action from you. Data recovery plans never guarantee success, and a thorough backup system is the only way to prevent data loss. Our pick doesn’t have encryption to protect your data from prying eyes. While the option to encrypt would be nice, it isn’t a dealbreaker for most people. If you really need encryption, use an encryption utility like or consider a. More storage, less portability: 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable. If you care more about price and storage space than size, you should get the.
It costs less per terabyte than the 2 TB Backup Plus Slim, and it was about as fast when reading and writing HD Tune transfer tests. The 4 TB model was slower in our other tests though, and it’s much thicker and heavier than the Slim. (But don’t buy the 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Fast by mistake. We don’t recommend that drive, because with two 2 TB drives inside, it has higher potential to fail.) Seagate sells a that’s the same dimensions and weight as the 4 TB version, and we found the larger capacity to be about 5 percent faster in our 2016 tests. It’s about the same price per terabyte right now, so you should buy it if you need the extra space in a portable drive. But if you want the fastest, most cost-effective drive and don’t care about portability, take a look at instead. It’s cheaper per terabyte and faster than the Backup Plus Portable, though it requires an AC adapter.
The 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable was nearly as reliable as our top pick: We found a 10-percent failure rate out of 1,477 Amazon reviews. It costs around $40 more than the 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim, making it considerably cheaper per terabyte, too. The Backup Plus Portable was a little faster than the Backup Plus Slim in the HD Tune benchmark, achieving results of 101.1 MB/s read and 88.1 MB/s write—13 MB/s and 1.7 MB/s faster, respectively, than the Slim.
(Its write speed is not fast enough to separate it from the Slim, though.) The Portable performed respectably in our Blu-ray and Time Machine tests, but the Slim made better time. Both models are fast and reliable, and you should expect to see similar everyday performance from these drives. The extra capacity comes with a minor downside: The Portable is larger and heavier than the Slim. Measuring 4.51 by 3.07 by 0.81 inches and weighing 8.6 ounces, the Portable is almost twice as thick and heavy as the Slim. Otherwise the Portable’s build quality is identical to the Slim’s, down to the slightly wobbly USB port. The Backup Plus Portable comes with the exact same software as the Slim, and you can read our thoughts on that.
In January 2016, and it “one of the most cost-effective and easily portable storage media” in August 2015. The 2 TB and 4 TB Slim models share a review pool on Amazon; they have a 4.1 star rating out of. What about wireless portable hard drives? In July 2018, G-Technology released the portable hard drive, which it claims has speeds up to 140 MB/s. It comes with a USB-C–to–USB-C cable as well as a USB-C–to–USB-A cable; both cables support speeds up to 5 GB/s.
The G-Drive Mobile USB-C is similar in size to our top pick, the, at 4.33 inches long, 3.23 inches wide, and 0.41 inches thick. At $100 for the G-Drive’s, it may be too expensive to go up against the $65 Seagate, but we’ll look into reviews to see if it’s a good USB-C option. The competition.
A bunch of the portable hard drives that we tested in 2018, including our top picks, the Seagate Backup Plus Slim (front left), and the Seagate Backup Plus Portable (front right). Photo: Rozette Rago The was briefly our top pick from November 2016 to late January 2017 because it was the lightest, thinnest, fastest portable hard drive we’d tested, and it had a reported failure rate of just 4.2 percent. Since then, however, the failure rate has gone way up: In early May 2018, we calculated a rate of 18.5 percent based on Amazon reviews. Anything above 10 percent is cause for concern, and we can’t recommend it based on that failure rate. The 2 TB and 2 TB are bigger than the Slim by 0.2 inches wide and nearly 0.4 inches thick, and they’re heftier by around 3 ounces. They were slower in most of our file transfer tests, too, although they were about as fast as our top pick in Time Machine testing. Like the other WD drives we tested, the 2 TB was bigger than the Slim.
It fell behind the Seagate Backup Plus Slim in HD Tune write tests by about 4 MB/s, and it was a little slower in Blu-ray tests, although its differences fell within normal variability. It was as quick as the Slim in Time Machine testing, too. But it’s only available only at Best Buy, and the price fluctuates more than we’d like.
The 2 TB and 2 TB are both as thin as our top pick, but their speeds were wildly inconsistent in our tests—both gave us some of the best Blu-ray scores and the very worst Time Machine speeds—and we have serious concerns about the drives’ performance. The is a decent choice if you want to expand your gaming console’s storage or don’t need software, but in our tests, the Seagate Backup Plus Slim was faster and costs the same per terabyte. Plus, the Expansion is larger and heavier than the Slim, and it comes with a short one-year warranty. We haven’t tested the, but it’s frequently more expensive than the Seagate Backup Plus Slim, it’s a little bigger on all sides, and it weighs about an ounce heavier, too. It has a 10-percent reported failure rate. We don’t love its bright green color scheme for most people, but we’ll look into testing it for our next update. Is larger, heavier, and more expensive per terabyte than our top pick, the Seagate Backup Plus Slim.
Is a gaming-focused drive with a short, one-year warranty and no software. Of all the drives we tested in 2015, it had the slowest HD Tune reads and writes—82.5 MB/s and 77.4 MB/s, respectively—and it’s larger and heavier than our picks. The has a one-year warranty, no software, and a bulkier design than the Slim. Two of the rugged hard drives we threw into a pool to test their water-resistance ratings. Photos: Kimber Streams At the end of 2016, we tested three promising, affordable rugged hard drives: the,.
All three drives are rated to survive going up to 1 meter (about 3.3 feet) underwater for up to 30 minutes, and rated to survive 26 drops on their various surfaces from 4 feet, but none of them survived these conditions in our real-world testing. We don’t recommend paying extra money for a bulkier, heavier drive that doesn’t protect your information like it says it will. We eliminated 10 other rugged drives in our previous update that lack both water and drop protection, which left us with the, the, and the, all of which cost too much for most people. LaCie’s and are both too expensive to compete with our top pick, and they lack the water protection necessary to consider them for a rugged option. The fails to qualify for a rugged pick on the same grounds.