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Even in 2018, MacBooks still have tiny hard drives that fill up quickly. Luckily there are quick and easy ways to free up space on your hard drive. Here’s how to clean up your Mac and reclaim some drive space.
- Best Hard Drive Cleaner For Mac
- Hard Drive Cleaner Windows 10
- Best Hard Drive Wipe Software
- Best Hard Drive Cleaner
- Best Hard Drive Cleaner Eraser
If you’re looking for a rugged, Mac-friendly, super fast external hard drive that can handle plenty of bumps, dust, rain, and bounces, take a look at LaCie’s Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C portable hard drive. The distinctive orange rubber bumpers and brushed aluminum chassis stand out from the rest of the drives out there. If you’re a Mac user, Disk Utility can write random information over any entire drive. A single pass with random data will foil most recovery software, but if you’re as paranoid as the US government, you can run multiple passes as well. Drive Genius 3 has a ton of great features, including hard drive health monitoring, but it is expensive. If I was looking for an app that just found duplicates, I would stick with Gemini. If I was just looking for an app to clean up my caches, I would stick with Disk Doctor.
You can obviously free up disk space by simply doing a cursory find-and-delete for big files and other things that you’ve downloaded, but realistically that’s only going to get you so far. Most of the wasted space on your Mac is only going to be reclaimed if you look at lot deeper—cleaning out language files, removing duplicate files, deleting attachments, clearing temporary files, or emptying all of the Trash cans.
- EaseUS CleanGenius: The best Mac hard drive cleaner software for Mac system Fast Clean: Find and remove junk files (including system caches, user caches, system logs, user logs, user downloads, trash, safari Internet cache, etc.) to free up disk space and keep your Mac in health.
- Mac OS X is an operating system developed by Apple. While the Mac OS X is traditionally viewed as being simpler and less complex than the Windows alternative, the hard drive in your Mac computer can still become slow if bogged down by too many files and folders.
If you fail to keep your Mac’s hard drive clean, you’re eventually going to get the dreaded “Your disk is almost full” error, so you may as well start now and clear up some space.
How to Clean Up Your Mac the Easy Way
If you don’t feel like spending a bunch of time to find and clean things up manually, you can use CleanMyMac 3 to get rid of temporary files, clean up extra language files, uninstall applications, get rid of extra files left behind by application uninstallations, find and get rid of big attachments stored in Mail, and a whole lot more.
It basically has all the features of the cleaning applications we talk about in this article, but in a single app—with the exception of finding duplicate files, which you’ll still want to use Gemini 2 for. Luckily it’s the same vendor that makes Gemini 2 and you can get them both as a bundle.
And of course, there’s a free trial that shows where your free space has gone and lets you clean up some of it for free.
Note: before running any cleaning tool, you should make sure that all of your important data is backed up, just in case.
Find and Remove Duplicate Files
One of the trickiest things that can take up lots of drive space are duplicate files littering up your computer—this is especially true if you’ve been using the computer for a long time. Luckily there are great apps like Gemini 2 that can be used to find and remove duplicate files with a really slick and easy interface.
You can buy it on the App Store if you want — Apple had this one as their Editors’ Choice, but you’re probably better off getting it from their website, because they have a free trial available there.
There are a lot of other choices on the App Store and elsewhere, but we’ve used this one and had good results.
Empty Your Trash Cans
The Trash on a Mac is equivalent to the Recycle Bin on Windows. Rather than permanently deleting files from within the Finder, they are sent to your Trash so you can restore them later if you change your mind. To completely remove these files and free up the space they require, you’ll have to empty your Trash. But Macs can actually have multiple trash cans, so you may need to empty several.
To empty your user account’s main trash can, Ctrl-click or right-click the Trash icon at the bottom-right corner of the dock and select Empty Trash. This will delete all the files you sent to the trash from the Finder.
iPhoto, iMovie, and Mail all have their own trash cans. If you’ve deleted media files from within these applications, you’ll need to empty their trash cans, too. For example, if you use iPhoto to manage your pictures and delete them in iPhoto, you’ll have to clear the iPhoto trash to remove them from your hard drive. To do this, just Ctrl+click or right-click the Trash option in that specific application and select Empty Trash.
Uninstall Applications You Don’t Use
The applications you have installed on your Mac are taking up space, of course. You should uninstall them if you don’t need them—just open a Finder window, select Applications in the sidebar, and drag-and-drop the application’s icon to the trash can on your dock. Some of these applications can be taking up a ton of space.
To find out which applications are using up the most space, open a Finder window and select Applications. Click the “Show items in a list” icon on the toolbar and then click the Size heading to sort your installed applications by size.
Clean Up the Huge iTunes Backups of Your iPhone or iPad
If you’ve backed up your iPhone or iPad to your Mac using iTunes, you’ve probably got a bunch of massive backup files that are taking up a shocking amount of space. We were able to clear up over 200 GB of space by finding and deleting some of these backup files.
To delete them manually, you can open up the following path to see the backup folders, which will have random names, and you can delete the folders found inside. You’ll probably want to close iTunes before you do that.
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
The easier (and much safer) way to delete them is to use CleanMyMac, which translates those confusing folders into actual backup names so you can decide which backup you actually want to delete. Just check the things you want to remove, and then click the Clean button.
Clear Out Temporary Files
Your Mac’s hard drive probably has temporary files you don’t need. These files often take up disk space for no good reason. Mac OS X tries to automatically remove temporary files, but a dedicated application will likely find more files to clean up. Cleaning temporary files won’t necessarily speed up your Mac, but it will free up some of that precious disk space.
Your web browser has a built-in option to clear out browsing data that you can use to quickly clear up a bit of space—but it’s not necessarily a great idea. These caches contain files from web pages so your browser can load the web pages faster in the future. Your web browser will automatically start rebuilding the cache as you browse, and it will just slow down web page load times as your browser’s cache grows again. Each browser limits its cache to a maximum amount of disk space, anyway.
There are a lot of other temporary files on your system, which you can see by opening up Finder, using Go -> Go to Folder on the menu, and using ~/Library/Caches to get to the cache folder. This will pull up a folder that has a ton of folders in it, which you can select and delete manually if you choose.
You can clean up temporary files easier, and much safer, by using CleanMyMac. Just open it up and run through a scan, and then go into the System Junk section to identify all of the cache files and other things that you can clean up. Once you’ve selected what you want or don’t want to clean, just click the Clean button.
One of the things that makes a utility like CleanMyMac so great is that it converts a lot of those confusing folder names into the names of the actual applications, so you can see which temporary files you’re actually deleting.
The thing about temporary files, of course, is that most of them are going to come back after you use your Mac for a while. So deleting temporary files is great, but only works for a while.
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Best Hard Drive Cleaner For Mac
Check Your Disk to See What is Taking Up Space and Find Large Files
To free up disk space, it’s helpful to know exactly what is using disk space on your Mac. A hard disk analysis tool like Disk Inventory X will scan your Mac’s hard disk and display which folders and files are using up the most space. You can then delete these space hogs to free up space.
If you care about these files, you may want to move them to external media — for example, if you have large video files, you may want to store them on an external hard drive rather than on your Mac.
Bear in mind that you don’t want to delete any important system files. Your personal files are located under /Users/name, and these are the files you’ll want to focus on.
Remove Language Files
Mac applications come with language files for every language they support. You can switch your Mac’s system language and start using the applications in that language immediately. However, you probably just use a single language on your Mac, so those language files are just using hundreds of megabytes of space for no good reason. If you’re trying to squeeze as many files as you can onto that 64 GB MacBook Air, that extra storage space can be useful.
To remove the extra language files, you can use CleanMyMac, as we’ve mentioned earlier (It’s under System Junk -> Language Files). There’s also another tool called Monolingual that can delete these as well, though it’s yet another tool to download for a very specific use. Removing language files is only necessary if you really want the space—those language files aren’t slowing you down, so keeping them is no problem if you have a big hard disk with more than enough free space.
Clean Up Big Attachments in Mac Mail
If you’re using the built-in Mail application in macOS and you’ve had the same email account for a long time, there’s a good chance that large email attachments are taking up a ton of space on your drive—sometimes many gigabytes worth, so this is a good place to check while cleaning up your drive.
RELATED:How to Stop Your Mac’s Mail App From Wasting Gigabytes of Space
You can change the Mail settings to not download attachments automatically to save space, or run a cleanup tool to get rid of them. If you’re using Gmail, you can set limits on how many messages are synced over IMAP by default to only show the last few thousand instead of everything. Go into Mail -> Preferences -> Accounts -> Account Information and change the drop-down for “Download attachments” to either “Recent” or “None”.
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Changing this setting will help Mail not use up as much space going forward, but it doesn’t solve the problem of attachments from emails that have already been downloaded.
If you want to remove those attachments, you’re going to need to follow a very annoying manual process:
- Open up Mail, and click on the folder that you want to find and remove attachments for.
- Use the Sort by Size option to find the biggest messages.
- Click on the message, and choose Message -> Remove Attachments from the menu bar. This won’t delete the attachment from the mail server if you’re using IMAP.
- Repeat for all the messages that you want to delete attachments for.
Note: if you are using POP for your email, do not delete attachments unless you really don’t want them anymore, because they will be gone forever otherwise. If you’re using IMAP, which any modern email like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail would be using, the messages and attachments will stay on the server.
Cleaning Up Email Attachments the Easy Way
If you want to clean up and delete old attachments automatically, there’s only one good solution that we know of, and that’s CleanMyMac. You can run a scan, head to Mail Attachments, and see all of the attachments that can be deleted. Click Clean, and your hard drive will be free of them. Those attachments will still be on your email server, assuming you’re using IMAP, so you can delete everything without worrying too much.
If you’re worried, you can also uncheck the box next to “All Files” and then manually select all of the files that you want to delete.
Clean Up Your Downloads Folder
This tip is so obvious that you’d think we don’t need to include it, but it’s something that everybody forgets to deal with—your Downloads folder is so often full of huge files that you don’t need, and it’s not something you think about.
Just open up Finder and head into your Downloads folder and start deleting everything you don’t need. You can sort by file size to quickly delete the biggest offenders, but don’t forget to look at the folders—remember that every time you open up an archive file, it automatically unzips into a folder. And those folders sit there looking innocuous but taking up tons of space on your drive.
Use the Storage Tools in macOS High Sierra
The latest version of macOS Sierra has a new tool to help you clean the junk out of your Mac — just go to the menu and choose “About This Mac” and then flip over to the Storage tab.
Once you are there, you can go through the new settings and enable the ones that make sense to you.
- Store in iCloud – this new feature allows you to store your Desktop, Documents, Photos, and videos in iCloud and Apple will automatically free up local space as needed. If you’re on a slow internet connection, you probably don’t want to enable this.
- Optimize Storage – the name doesn’t really match the feature, which basically deletes purchased iTunes movies and TV shows after you’ve watched them to keep them from cluttering up your drive. Since movies, especially in HD format, are extremely large files, this can help keep your Mac from running out of space. You can, of course, download them again any time if you’ve purchased them.
- Empty Trash Automatically – this is fairly simple, if you turn this on Apple will automatically delete old items out of the trash after they have been in there for 30 days.
- Reduce Clutter – this will help you find the biggest files on your hard drive and delete them.
It’s a little clunky and not as easy to use as some of the third-party tools, but it does work.
Be sure to also remove other files you don’t need. For example, you can delete downloaded .dmg files after you’ve installed the applications inside them. Like program installers on Windows, they’re useless after the program is installed. Check your Downloads folder in the Finder and delete any downloaded files you don’t need anymore.
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Our editors independently research, test, and recommend the best products; you can learn more about our review process here. We may receive commissions on purchases made from our chosen links.
The Rundown
- Best Overall: Western Digital My Passport at Amazon, “Offers outstanding performance that rivals that of pricier competitors.”
- Runner-Up, Best Overall:Samsung T5 SSD at Amazon, “The all-metal, shock-resistant enclosure is rugged and portable.”
- Best for Business:WD 8TB My Book Desktop at Amazon, “Offers far more capacity than more portable drives for far less cash.”
- Best Splurge:Seagate Backup Plus Hub 6TB at Amazon, “This drive offers a lot of capacity and it’s fast and flexible.”
- Best for Gaming:U32 ShadowUSB at Amazon, “A USB 3.0 device that has plug-and-play compatibility with the Xbox One.”
- Best for Apple:LaCie Rugged 2TB Thunderbolt USB-C at Amazon, “Super fast drive that can handle plenty of bumps, rain, and bounces.”
- Best Portability:Toshiba Canvio Advance at Amazon, “Users delight in the small size, transfer speeds, and cool running temperature.”
- Best Durability: Silicon Power 1TB Rugged Armor at Amazon, “Offering a tough exterior with a shockproof design.”
Our Top Picks
Best Overall, Best for Fast Transfers: Western Digital My Passport
4.2
What We Like
- Excellent storage capacity for the price
- Encryption built-in
- Automatic backup
What We Don't Like
- Slower than a portable SSD
- https://newcraft504.weebly.com/best-free-anti-virus-2016-for-mac.html. No fancy features
My Passport is an inexpensive drive, but it offers outstanding performance that rivals that of pricier competitors thanks to a 3.0 USB port and excellent disk controller. This drive allows a maximum transfer speed of 174 MBps read, and 168 MBps write. It’s available in sizes ranging from 1 TB to 4 TB. Our tester thought it was a great overall value for the price: 'If you're on a budget and looking for a cheap and cheerful storage solution, the My Passport isn't very fancy but it does a reliable job of storing your precious files,' he said.
Runner-Up, Best Overall: Samsung T5 Portable SSD
What We Like
- Compact design
- Lightning fast transfer speeds
- Compatible with multiple devices
What We Don't Like
- Smaller storage space
- Outdated aesthetic
- Pricey
The Samsung T5 Portable DDS is on the pricey side (especially in the larger capacities), but the speed and security it comes with are worth it for those looking for durable performance. Weighing less than 2 ounces, the all-metal, shock-resistant enclosure is very portable. What really makes this device stand out, though, is its super-fast transfer speed, with up to 540 MB/s thanks to the SSD design, making it ideal for transferring giant files like 4K videos. Our tester, agreed, raving that its speed was 'unbeatable.' The T5 connects to just about anything, too, with its USB 3.1 Type-C and Type-A ports and works with Windows, Mac, and Android devices. Plus, integrated AES 256-bit hardware encryption ensures the safety of your data.
Best for Business: WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0
What We Like
- Automatic backup system
- Fantastic storage capacity
- Above average transfer speeds
What We Don't Like
- Needs external power to function
- Limited portability
The My Book Desktop External Hard Drive from Western Digital, while large, fits the bill for business owners in need of serious space: It comes in 3, 4, 6, 8, or 10TB varieties and offers Western Digital’s own backup solution for Windows users. It’s also compatible with Time Machine for Mac users (though you may need to reformat). It has 256-bit AES hardware encryption for strong security and has both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports to connect to a wide range of computers. You'll have to rely on the device's wall-based power supply, but according to our tester, that’s worth the trade-off for this spacious vault that holds your invaluable digital data: 'Though it's not really a portable hard drive,' he explained, 'it's definitely the best option if you want a static drive that sits on your desk storing and backing up your files in a secure manner.'
Best Splurge: Seagate Backup Plus Hub 6TB STEL6000100
4.6
What We Like
- Massive capacity
- Great value for size
- Solid speed
What We Don't Like
- A few interrupted connections
- Must reformat for Mac OS
If cost is no concern, we recommend taking a close look at the Seagate Backup Plus Hub. It houses SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives, which allow more physical bits of memory in the same space without decreasing the size of the bits. This drive offers a lot of capacity — available in 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, and 8TB versions — and is fast and flexible. Our testers appreciated the two extra USB ports on the front where you can charge other devices while you work. One of our reviewers reported that it took 12 minutes to do a 9 GB transfer, which equates to a write speed of about 107 Mbps. “It feels like a good value to me,” one of our testers said.
Best for Gaming: U32 ShadowUSB Hard Drive
3.6
What We Don't Like
- Limited color options
This USB 3.0 connective device has plug-and-play compatibility with the Xbox One, which means your gaming console will immediately recognize the drive as soon as it’s plugged in. Our testers took advantage of the drive’s 1TB capacity by storing Forza Horizon 3, Titanfall 2, Halo 5, Sea of Thieves, Fortnite, PUBG, and Madden 19 — and didn’t experience a single issue. If you plan to use this device to store more than just games, 1TB is large enough to hold 650,000 photos, 250,000 songs, and over 500 hours of video. The small black device is stylish and even comes with a three-year warranty.
Best for Apple: LaCie Rugged 2TB Thunderbolt USB-C Portable Hard Drive
What We Like
- Extremely durable
- Integrated connecting cable
- Large capacity
If you’re looking for a Mac-friendly external hard drive that’s built for durability, take a look at LaCie’s Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C portable hard drive. With its distinctive rubber bumpers and brushed aluminum chassis, the drive offers drop resistance up to 5 feet, crush resistance that can withstand up to a 1-ton car, and IP54 water and dust resistance. You’ll never worry about losing your connecting cable, either, as this series of hard drives, available in 2 to 5 TB capacities, have an attached USB cord in your favorite flavor (USB-C, USB-C Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt, or USB 3.0). It's fast, too, with up to 510MB/s with the SSD version and up to 130MB/s with the HDD version.
Best Portability: Toshiba Canvio Advance 3TB Portable Hard Drive HDTC930XR3CA
What We Don't Like
- Must reformat for Mac OS
Not much bigger than a deck of cards, Toshiba’s Canvio Advance portable hard drive offers 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 3TB models to fill with as much media as can fit. It plugs into your Mac or PC with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. Some customers report seeing around 110 Mbps of throughput when using a USB 3.0 port. It also features an internal shock sensor that will make sure your data isn’t corrupted if the drive is jostled while in use. Users delight in the small size, fast transfer speeds, and cool running temperature of this little portable drive.
Best Durability: Silicon Power 1TB Rugged Armor A60 Military-Grade
What We Like
- Water resistant
- Drop-proof and shockproof
- Reasonable price
Silicon Power’s Armor A60 external hard drive, in 1, 2, or 5 TB versions, is no joke, offering a tough, drop-proof (up to 4 feet) exterior with a shockproof design andIPX4 water-resistant protection. The textured casing is also scratch and slip-proof with a silicon bumper around the sides. The A60 reads and writes super fast thanks to the USB 3.0 cable, which conveniently affixes to the drive itself, and is compatible with Mac and PC devices courtesy of the FAT32 file system. While there might be higher performing everyday options, for photographers and others looking for a device that's adventure compatible, the A60 is a perfect choice.
FAQs
Why would I need an external hard drive?
External hard drives provide portable storage space for files, allowing you to increase the total storage of your computer, share files between computers, or simply keep backed-up files secure in case something happens to the originals. If your computer is slowing down or you’re getting warnings about low storage space, it might be time to invest in an external hard drive to free up some space on your computer’s internal hard drive.
What’s the difference between a hard disk drive (HDD) and a solid-state drive (SSD)?
You’ll find external hard drives in HDD and SSD versions, and they both perform the same function—with a few distinct advantages. HDDs have been around much longer and stores files by way of a spinning electromagnetic disk, whereas SSDs rely on flash memory chips for storage and therefore have no moving parts. This means SSDs are usually faster, more dependable, and more expensive. You can get much more storage for a fairly cheap price with an HDD.
How are external hard drives powered?
Some external hard drives get their power from the computer itself transmitted over the data cable, and others require the additional power from an AC outlet. All external hard drives connect to the computer either by USB, FireWire, eSATA, or wirelessly, and this connection type is directly linked to transfer speed.
Digital storage is changing. Internal storage drives are getting bigger, cloud storage is getting cheaper, and USB drives are getting less common. But that doesn’t necessarily negate the need for a good external hard drive — in fact, sometimes they’re the best way to go.
Buying a hard drive isn’t as simple as purchasing the first (or cheapest) one you see. There are a number of factors to consider when buying an external storage drive, and the kind of drive you ultimately end up buying could dictate what you’re able to do with it.
So what should you keep in mind? For starters, you’ll want to decide between a hard drive and a solid-state drive, both of which offer some major advantages and disadvantages. You’ll also want to think about drive speed, hard drive format, connectivity, and special protection features.
Before diving into our guide, there are a few terms you should know. You'll most likely be deciding between a drive of multiple gigabytes (GB), or multiple terabytes (TB). One terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, and one gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes (MB). An MP3 file takes around 3.5MB, meaning that one gigabyte can store around 285 songs. One HD movie takes up around 3.5GB — so one terabyte can store 285 HD movies.
Here’s everything to consider when buying an external drive.
Storage Size
The most important thing to consider is the size of your drive. We’re not talking how physically big, but rather, how much storage you want. It’s hard to recommend a storage size because it varies from person to person and largely depends on what you plan on storing. A good rule of thumb, however, is to determine how much storage you think you’ll need and then buy a drive that’s double.
If you plan on storing documents only, you probably don’t need much more than 80GB. If you’re storing a small to medium music collection and photos, then up to 256GB should be fine. For storing movies and other video content, the amount you need could range into the multiple terabytes, especially if the movies are in 4K. Ultimately, it’s always good to get more storage than you think you’ll need — even if it means shelling out more money.
Types of External Drives
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Next, it’s time to decide on the kind of storage drive you want. There are two main types of external storage drives, and while they ultimately serve the same purpose, the way they store files is markedly different.
Traditionally, if you wanted a storage drive it meant buying a hard disk drive. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to this. For starters, hard disk drives have been around for quite some time, so they’ve become relatively cheap. They function by storing files on an electromagnetic disk that spins around and is read by a moving arm.
Because of those moving parts, they’re much more likely to break with a lot of movement. The speed of a hard disk drive is essentially dictated by how fast the electromagnetic disk spins, and they're generally slower than solid-state drives. (We’ll get more into the different speeds later.) Hard disk drives are the way to go, however, if you want a lot of storage at a cheap price and don’t plan on moving them a lot.
Solid state drives do away with the moving electromagnetic disk, and replace it with what’s called “flash storage.” That’s the same kind of storage that’s used in smartphones, RAM in computers, and, these days, many of the internal storage drives in computers. Solid-state storage essentially uses microchips to store information, and as a result, there are no moving parts. That means there’s a lower failure rate, higher speed, and simply better overall performance. In particular, that means they’re great for running software or an operating system off of.
Of course, there is a downside to all of those advantages — and that’s price. Solid-state drives are much more expensive than hard disk drives, and while they are going down in price, you simply can’t get multi-terabyte solid-state drives without spending at least a few hundred dollars.
Performance
There are a few things that can affect the performance of a hard drive beyond simply what type of hard drive it is. That’s truer of a hard disk drive than a solid-state drive, but solid-state drives still have performance-related metrics that you should pay attention to.
The transfer speed of a hard drive largely has to do with the type of connector that the hard drive comes with. Newer connection standards have higher transfer speeds. The term “transfer speed” is technically a little misleading, as it doesn’t really dictate exactly how fast a hard drive can transfer files to and from your computer. Instead, it tells you how fast a hard drive can theoretically transfer files, based on the connection protocol the hard drive uses.
In the past, the connector was the main limiting factor in how fast a drive could transfer files: USB 2.0 hard drives, in the real world, could transfer data at up to 20 MB/second, while FireWire 800 drives limited things to 85 MB/second. These days, the newer USB 3.0 standard allows for data transfer at up to 460 MB/second, while Thunderbolt allows for speeds of over 1GB/second. Because of that, the connection type isn’t the bottleneck. Instead, the speed is dictated by how fast the hard drive can read and write data, which is referred to as the read/write speed.
Read/write speeds refer to how quickly a hard drive can access the files stored within it — not how quickly those files are transferred to or from a computer. The “read” speed refers to how quickly a hard drive can access a stored file, while the “write” speed refers to how quickly a drive can save a new file. Given the development in transfer protocols, read/write speeds are a much better indicator of how fast your hard drive will be able to actually transfer files than “transfer speed,” especially when it comes to hard disk drives.
Read/write speeds change a lot depending on whether it’s an HDD or SDD, and even within those categories there can be some variation. As mentioned, HDDs have a spinning disk inside of them, and the rate at which drives can access data depends on how quickly that disk spins. Commonly, drives spin at 5,400RPM, or rotations per minute, and drives at that speed generally have a read/write speed of around 100MB/s. Some HDDs have a physical speed of 7,200RPM, which allows for a slightly faster read/write speed of 120MB/s.
Read/write speeds can vary a lot with SSDs, but typically they range from 200MB/s at the slowest to multiple GB per second at the fastest. If all you’re doing is transferring files, then any of those speeds should be more than enough, but if you’re using your drive to store software or your operating system, then something on the fast end might help. In that case, look for speeds of 500MB/s or more.
Other Features and Considerations
While the type of hard drive and performance of the hard drive are perhaps the most important factors to consider, there are a few other features to keep in mind.
While most consumer-level hard drives connect to your computer through a USB cable, some offer network connectivity instead, meaning you can access your hard drive from any computer or phone that’s on the same network. That can be pretty helpful for those who have multiple computers set up and simply want to use an external hard drive to back up files and transfer files between computers.
You can actually give any external hard drive network features by simply plugging it into your router — providing your router has a compatible port on it — but it will require a little more tweaking to get set up properly. Still, special network-connected drives have some advantages. For example, so-called “Network Attached Storage” or NAS, can be used as a media server by apps like Plex, while standard router-connected drives aren’t necessarily able to do so. NAS is a little more expensive, but it’s also often expandable thanks to extra slots in the enclosure, which can accept more actual hard drives.
Check out our guide to the best NAS (Network Attached Storage).
The kind of port or ports that your hard drive uses to connect to a computer is very much linked to transfer speed. Most hard drives connect to a computer through a form of USB. That could mean the now-outdated USB 2.0 or the newer USB 3.0 or USB 3.1, and if it is USB 3.1, it could also connect through the newer USB-C connector, while still using the USB 3.1 standard.
Other ports, which are increasingly less common, include FireWire 400 and FireWire 800, though fewer and fewer computers support those ports, so you should be wary of that when purchasing.
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We recommend looking for a hard drive with USB 3.1 support and a USB-C connector, especially if your computer is relatively new. It might mean having to buy an adapter to use with your current computer that may not have USB-C, but it means that when you upgrade to a new computer, your external hard drive will stay usable.
Check out our guide to the best USB-C adapters available.
External hard drives come in a few different formats, though it’s very easy to reformat a hard drive if you happen to buy the wrong kind. Hard drive formats are largely linked to the operating system that you’re going to be using the hard drive with. Here’s a quick rundown.
NTFS is the most common format for new external hard drives and can be used with Windows computers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as well with any other operating systems. Macs can read NTFS-formatted hard drives, but can’t write to them.
HFS+, which stands for “Hierarchical File System,” is a hard drive format that works much better with Macs, and it’s an improvement on the older HFS format in that it can support larger file types. Unfortunately, HFS+ drives don’t really work with Windows computers. HFS+ drives are the way to go for those who plan on using them with Macs that are running slightly older versions of macOS.
APFS is a newer hard drive format that works with Mac computers, but it only works with Mac running macOS High Sierra or newer. Like HFS+ drives, APFS drives can’t be read by Windows computers.
exFAT is essentially a mix of NTFS and FAT32, an older drive format that’s not used much anymore. There are a number of advantages to exFAT drives — namely that they can be recognized by both Windows and Mac computers, so if you need support for both, it’s worth formatting your drive to exFAT.
If you’re not sure what hard drive format to go for, then go for exFAT, since it works with most operating systems. Most hard drives come in NTFS, though, so you may need to buy one and then reformat it. Keep in mind it's not as easy to reformat a HFS+ or APFS drive if you need to use it on Windows.
The physical size of an external hard drive doesn't necessarily translate to the amount of storage space, particularly with the advent of flash storage. You really only have a say in the physical size of a hard drive when it comes to solid-state drives, as there are standard sizes for hard disk drives. Hard disk drives’ spinning disks can come in either 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch sizes. A standard size for a portable hard disk drive, for example, is the Western Digital Elements 2TB hard drive, which comes in at 4.35 x 3.23 x 0.59 inches. Smaller desktop hard drives come in at around 7 x 5 inches and range up from there.
Solid-state hard drives can be much smaller, making them much more portable. The SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD, for example, comes in a size of 3.79 x 1.95 x 0.35 inches — a fairly average size for solid-state drives.
External hard drives can come with features designed to keep files more secure, which might be important if you plan on using yours to store sensitive information. For example, some hard drives offer password-protection by default, meaning you can easily set a password to keep all your files safe. Some also offer high-level encryption, rendering your files useless to those who don’t have your password, even if they manage to somehow hack into the drive.
A hard drive buffer is essentially storage that exists between the computer and the actual storage in a hard drive. Files stored by the hard drive in the buffer can be accessed far quicker than those stored in the main storage of a hard drive, and the bigger the hard drive buffer — sometimes called the cache — the better the overall performance the drive is likely to have.
Generally speaking, you really only need to care about the size of the buffer if you plan on running software from your hard drive. If all you’re doing is storing files, the type of drive and the speed of the disk will be much more important.
If you do feel as though you need a hard drive with a larger buffer, then we recommend getting one with at least a 64MB cache, though those with 128MB and even 256MB are pretty common, too.
Price
Depending on the type of hard drive and the amount of storage you opt for, the price can vary drastically.
Hard disk drives, as mentioned, are much cheaper than solid-state drives, so if you need a lot of storage at a reasonable price, a HDD might be the way to go. You can expect to pay around as little as 3 cents per GB for a HDD.
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On the other hand, it's not uncommon to see a solid-state drive that runs into 25 cents per GB. Lower-capacity SSDs might range up to 40 cents per GB, while 2TB SSDs might come at 20 cents. Of course, that still makes for a drive that costs hundreds of dollars.
Conclusion
While there's a lot to keep in mind when buying an external hard drive, hopefully, this will help you narrow down your selection. Our overall recommendations? If you want lots of storage at a reasonable price, and don’t plan on moving your hard drive around a lot, go for an HDD. If you want fast performance and either don’t need a lot of storage or are willing to spend more, then an SSD is your best best. In both cases, it’s a good idea to find a drive that supports USB 3.0 or later, and a USB-C port might be helpful depending on whether your computer has a USB-C port.
There are a few brands that have built a reputation for quality external hard drives, including Western Digital, SanDisk, and Seagate. It’s often worth buying a hard drive from a reputable brand, as smaller companies may not offer much in the way of support for faulty drives.
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Rest assured, no matter what your needs are there’s likely a hard drive out there for you, and hopefully purchasing is a little easier with your new-found knowledge of their key features.