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Best External Hard Drive For Mac In 2020 – What Options Are Available?

External hard drives are considered quite useful in order to store important official and personal files. You may need it for creating an external backup of your data. Besides, it can be used as your storage extension, giving you more space on your Mac to keep your important stuff handy. You don’t really need to open the machine and fit in an additional hard drive. So, whether you’re in need of an external hard disk drive for storing more stuff or just want to create a backup of everything you’ve store on your Mac, you should find out the best external hard drive for Mac.

Here we have listed some of the real best when it comes to external hard drives for Mac in 2018. These drives have been proven to offer optimum performance and should be picked without any confusion whatsoever. Let’s take a look at these best options.

  1. Seagate Seven

Seagate Seven claims to be smallest available external drive with 500 GB storage space and is precision crafted. Available in an elegant rugged stainless steel casing, the hard drive is actually small in its size and measures only 7x82x123mm whereas its weight is only 173g. Being one of the slimmest hard drives available, it really makes for greater portability.

The physical portability of the drive is further enhanced owing to the fact that it’s formatted for the exFAT which allows you to use it for Macs and Windows interchangeably.

The hard drive includes the Dashboard Software from the manufacturer that allows for creating backups of photos and uploading them to social networks later. The drive also comes with quality USB 3.0 to micro USB-B cable. Besides, there is a guide for quick start information that will help you in the set up process. The 3 years guarantee makes sure that you never have to suffer in case if something goes wrong.

What you may not like, however, is the fact that it’s a bit on the expensive side and may not be considered too fast for SSD drive. Overall, it is probably the best out there when it comes to portable external drives for Mac.

  1. WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo

Thunderbolt Duo is a nice external hard drive that can be bought in two storage capacities i.e. 4TB and 6TB. Besides, there’s a 30 days money back guarantee that you can avail should change your mind or do not like the performance of the hard drive. Furthermore, you can upgrade it easily all by yourself and it only requires you to open the drive’s case and replace existing drive.

This hard disk drive is based around bi-directional technology which allows for faster multitasking. This means, you won’t have any issues when performing several graphic-intensive jobs concurrently on your drive like performing 3D rendering and showing some video at the same time.

This certainly is the best external hard drive for Mac that comes with WD Drive Utilities, allowing users to register their drive, run tests, manage JBOD or RAID modes and doing different other tasks.

The drive is quite connectable and comes with a couple of channels with a maximum transfer rate of 10GB/s in both the directions.

It is formatted for the Snow Leopard and Lion version of macOS X and requires you to have a computer system with Thunderbolt connector. There is support for macOS 10.6.8 or later and it comes with a quick installation guide and AC adapter.

As for its size, it’s 99x157x165mm and the weight is around 2.3 kg. It also works fine with Mac’s Time Machine to create automatic backups. Besides, you don’t really have to worry about security of your drive either as it comes with encryption and password protection enabled.

All in all, it is best for Mac users and combines great technology with ample storage to fulfill all your requirements.

  1. Apple AirPort Time Capsule

The Airport Time Capsule from Apple can be found easily in 2TB as well as 3TB storage sizes. In fact, it’s not just a simple external hard disk drive and can serve as your wireless router as well as network attached storage.

Another one among the options available for best external hard drive for mac, this one was introduced at Macworld Conference & Expo in 2008 while its 5th generation came to the scene in 2013 along with 6th gen AirPort Extreme. As for the latest release, it was named Airport Time Capsule.

Though a bit on the expensive side as compared to common hard disk drives available today, Time Capsule puts you in the driving seat as it works fine with the Time Machine backups on OSX. In addition, Mac detects it automatically as well.

As for its size, it measures 168x98x98 mm and its weight is around 1.48 kg. You may not like it in terms of its connectivity because it comes with 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports along with a single USB 2.0 port.

Even though you may find it hard to define best external hard drive for mac, The AirPort Time Capsule from Apple is still a good choice.

  1. Maxtor M3 Portable External Hard Drive

You may be wondering that Seagate currently owns this brand then why is it called the Maxtor M3. Well, the thing is still M3 is presented under Maxtor umbrella. The hard drive comes with 3 years guarantee and is quite portable to meet all your external storage requirements. With a 4TB storage capacity, M3 supports Windows Vista/7/8/10 as well as macOS X 10.4.8 and higher.

The size of the drive varies with capacity as it measures 82×118.2×19.85 mm for 3TB and 4TB models while 500GB model is 82x112x17.5mm. As for weights 3TB and 4TB models are 236g while 2TB model weighs 169g, 1TB model weighs 151g and 500GB model weighs 141g.

There is different software to accompany the device including AutoBackup to create drive backups automatically, Secure Drive to offer drive security, as well as SecretZone to offer data encryption capabilities.

It is ideal external storage option keeping environmental challenges in mind as it can work with temperature ranges between 5°C to 40°C and you can store it anywhere between -20°C to 65°C. The speed offered is 5.0 GB/s with USB 3.0.

Another best external hard drive for Mac, you can get this one is 1TB, 2TB, or 3TB options. The distinct orange-colored rubber sleeve makes it easily identifiable. Besides, it’s been purposefully designed to survive most difficult of environmental situations. This external hard drive is drop, crush, and rain resistant and comes with 2 years warranty to offer you peace of mind. The compact size of this device makes it even more portable. It’s been tested to resist 1.2m drop and 1tn car crush. So, you can expect a sturdy piece that can last the test of time.

So, pick one of the best external hard drive for Mac from the above list and you’ll surely have one suiting your specific requirements.

Categories: Hardware