You went to your computer and moved the cursor around. Nothing happened. Panic has set in. All your pictures, documents and files are on that computer. Your family pictures from the past 10 years, vacation pictures from last summer, tax files, grad school papers and more are saved to that computer. Now, it’s all lost.
If you had purchased an external hard drive and backed up your computer you would still have all of those files. But you didn’t, so now they’re all gone.
Hopefully you’ve never found yourself in this situation but, just in case, our experts have done a megaton of research to make our recommendations for the best external hard drive in various categories so you can pick which will work most effectively for you. Because, now you know just how important it is to backup your data!
Article Overview
- Best Hard Drives By Category
- Other Hard Drives Reviewed
- Using Time Machine on Macs (Video)
- Protect Your Data With Online Backup
Best External Hard Drives (By Category)
Our experts have reviewed hard drives in three categories: disaster proof, wireless, and portable. See a hard drive or category that’s not included and you’d like to see in our review? Let us know in the comments!
Disaster Proof: Lacie Rugged Mini
This LaCie Rugged Mini is our pick for the best disaster proof hard drive due to its shock, rain and pressure resistance. LaCie is owned by Seagate technology.
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Tech Specs
- Size: 3.5 x 1 x 5.5 inches
- Weight: 8 ounces
- Hard drive rotation speed: 5400 rpm
- 1-5 year warranty (depending on LaCie version)
Pricing
- 1TB External Hard Drive – Check Amazon for availability
- 2TB External Hard Drive – $99.99
- 4TB External Hard Drive – $149.99
Wireless: WD Passport
We’ve chosen the WD Passport as our winner in this category because of its small, thin size. And it doesn’t have to be plugged in to an outlet, so you can use this on the go.
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Tech Specs
- Size: 4.33 x 3.21 x 0.62 inches
- Weight: 5.4 ounces
- Hard drive rotational speed: 5400 rpm
- 3 year warranty
Pricing
- Passport 1TB External Hard Drive – $89.99
- Passport 2TB External Hard Drive – $90.59
- Passport 3TB External Hard Drive – $192.50
Portable: Seagate One Touch
The Seagate One Touch wins this category because of its slender size.
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Tech Specs
- Size: 4.47 x 2.99 x 0.48 inches
- Weight: 4.8 ounces
- Hard drive rotational speed: 5400rpm
- 2 year warranty
Pricing
What About Toshiba And HGST?
Toshiba and HGST (a Western Digital company) make solid hard drives as well. They didn’t make the cut for our winning positions this year, but they may have unique features that suit your needs best, so we encourage you to check them out.
Toshiba Canvio Basics
This Toshiba Canvio Basics has good customer service but doesn’t offer built-in password protection.
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Tech Specs
- Size: 4.7 x 3.1 x 0.59 inches
- Weight: 8.2 ounces
- Hard drive rotational speed: 5400rpm
- 1 year warranty
Pricing
HGST Touro S
HGST, Inc. was formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. This HGST Touro S has no password protection and the company lacks in customer service.
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Tech Specs
- Size: 0.47 x 4.53 x 3.15 inches
- Weight: 5.4 ounces
- Hard drive rotational speed: 7200 rpm
- 2 year warranty
Pricing
How To Use Time Machine Backup On Apple (Video)
Need help backing up your computer? Here’s a tutorial on how to backup your computer if you have an Apple computer.
Backup Your Data Online (Into The Cloud)
An external hard drive does a great job of backing up your data. And these days with evolutions in data transfer, it can do so quickly, and you can store a large amount of data on a small hard drive at a relatively affordable cost.
But in the event of a natural disaster, or your hard drive simply getting too old, your data will still be at risk of loss. This is why our experts recommend making the primary backup of your data online, or to the cloud. We’ve reviewed the best online backup services with pricing, pros, cons, user reviews, member discounts, and more.
Decide on a hard drive? Let us know which one in the comments!
Tagged With: Comparison
