The Best External Hard Drives and Portable SSDs of 20xx

[Admin]

Here are the best external hard drives and SSDs for the money. These drives offer the best balance of performance, features and price.

The Best External Hard Drives and Portable SSDs of 20xx : Read more

 

[Gingecat]

I thought the first item seemed too good to be true at £8.59 and I was right. I clicked on the Amazon link and turned out it was
Khanka hard case carrying bag for SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD

Did the reviewer have too much to dream last night?

 

[Ksdomino]

4TB hard drive is the best in 2020? Are you not aware that seagate released a portable (very good and equally reliable) 5TB drive in 2017?!?
nearly 3 years later and we're still stuck with 5TB (apart from the reviewer that is stuck even lower at 4TB).. Am really hoping the 8TB portables don't take too long.

Edit: Also if you're going to recommend WD drives in Jan 2020 you might wanna look into the new WD Black drives. They also come in 5TB capacity but cost a bit more because performance.

 

[JSylvester]

4TB hard drive is the best in 2020? Are you not aware that seagate released a portable (very good and equally reliable) 5TB drive in 2017?!?
nearly 3 years later and we're still stuck with 5TB (apart from the reviewer that is stuck even lower at 4TB).. Am really hoping the 8TB portables don't take too long.

Edit: Also if you're going to recommend WD drives in Jan 2020 you might wanna look into the new WD Black drives. They also come in 5TB capacity but cost a bit more because performance.

If you're looking for a portable 8TB, there aren't any single 2.5" HDD options. However, LaCie and Oyen Digital both offer a Rugged RAID that is 8TB in RAID0. Oyen Digital also offers a 10TB option.

For single drives, there are SSD options now that are at 8TB (7.68TB) Oyen Digital just released an 8TB SSD option in their MiniPro line.

 

[WarthogARJ]

Here are the best external hard drives and SSDs for the money. These drives offer the best balance of performance, features and price.

The Best External Hard Drives and Portable SSDs of 2019 : Read more

I think one metric for comparing storage is to look at Sustained Write Performance as well, because it affects anyone who needs to do a large write: whether it's just once a week, or else many times a day.

But I've looked at Tom's Hadware's Reviews, and it's hard to get enough details n the process used to perform the test, in order to relate it to other factors, and to other Revew sites. Or in fact to your existing SSD if you test it.

Specifically, when you do the Sustained Sequential 128kB Write test, what do you use for:
(1) Queue Depth?
(2) Conditioning the SSD before?
(3) Data recording frequency? (your charts are smooth lines, without any points to indicate the datum points). Do you do it 1 or two datum points per second, or is it by data volume, as in 1 datum per GB or so?
(4) Overprovisioning: do you control this, or do you use the "stock" settings?

The other review sites that do this type of test (Anandtech, TechPowerUp, Guru3D, TweakTown) supply sufficient detail to be able to use their test results.

Once you know the above, you can calculate other metrics such as IOPS and Latency. And with so many SSD variants made, it's not possible to find any single Review site that does them all, or even reviews the size you might want to buy.

Therefore you need to be able to compare benchmark results as best you can, but that means you need sufficent details on the critical parameters used.

i'm sure it's just an oversight on your part, you give details on other aspects.

Thank you for your feedback on this.
Regards,
Alan, Sheffield

 

[Snefferdy]

It would be nice if the people writing an article highlighting data transfer speeds knew the difference between a gigabyte (GB) and a gigabit (Gb). 1 GB = 8Gb!

For example, the first drive (SanDisk) has an advertised top speed of 7.8 Gbps, not 80 Gbps as the authors state.

 

[kawmic]

There are NO good hdd's! SSD is the only way to go!

 

[MrMyke_S]

Just checking to see when folks started confusing hard and solidstate drives.
I guess it was before this column started, even.

 

[Latte5570]

this article doesn't discuss having a portal OS on any of these.
are any of these practical to have a portable os installed on them and have it at usable speed?

 

[USAFRet]

this article doesn't discuss having a portal OS on any of these.
are any of these practical to have a portable os installed on them and have it at usable speed?

The differing SSDs would make no difference.
A good drive is a good drive, a bad drive is a bad drive.

And for something like a bootable OS, you're still pumping all that through a USB/thunderbolt connection. Slow, as compared to an internal SATA or NVMe connection.

 

[Skramblr]

Here are the best external hard drives and SSDs for the money. These drives offer the best balance of performance, features and price.

The Best External Hard Drives and Portable SSDs of 2019 : Read more

I thought this article missed the backup aspect of having an External Drive. SSDs for a backup drive you plug in once a month is a huge waste of money.

Then I notice - This atricle has been recycled by TomsHardware for 3 years! They retitled it to best of 2022. WTH?

 

[tenexe]

Going to have to disagree on the Western Digital Devices in two areas. First the reputation for being reliable and solid is a sham. Secondly they don't stand by their products. I just had my third WD external drive fail on me causing me to lose 3 TB of data. Three strikes your out. I haven't had the device for even 6 months and when I contacted WD the response was we will send you a list of third party vendors to try to recover your data, at my cost of course, and then we can replace the third faulty drive we've sold you with another. No thanks. Will never purchase another WD product again. Three strikes and your out. I've owned about 10 hard drives in the last decade. The only ones that have failed on me consistently are the WD.

 

[tenexe]

There are NO good hdd's! SSD is the only way to go!

absolutely correct. If you're Bill Gates and can afford the outrageous cost.

 

[USAFRet]

Going to have to disagree on the Western Digital Devices in two areas. First the reputation for being reliable and solid is a sham. Secondly they don't stand by their products. I just had my third WD external drive fail on me causing me to lose 3 TB of data. Three strikes your out. I haven't had the device for even 6 months and when I contacted WD the response was we will send you a list of third party vendors to try to recover your data, at my cost of course, and then we can replace the third faulty drive we've sold you with another. No thanks. Will never purchase another WD product again. Three strikes and your out. I've owned about 10 hard drives in the last decade. The only ones that have failed on me consistently are the WD.

Data loss is your fault.
This is what backups are for.

ALL storage devices are subject to fail, at any moment.
Prepare for that.

 

[tenexe]

Data loss is your fault.
This is what backups are for.

ALL storage devices are subject to fail, at any moment.
Prepare for that.

NO sweetheart they are not. My point is that the devices are unreliable which is a fact. There is absolutely no excuse why a device should fail within 3 months and there is even less of an excuse for it to be the second time a device failed under warranty. Thank your for your obtuse response however.

The point I am making is the hard drives made by western digital are unreliable and they are junk. That is a FACT sunshine. If you have some evidence to the contrary than please provide it otherwise keep your opinions to yourself. You want to try to parse out that the data loss was my fault than you are missing the point of my post. The devices are junk. perhaps you should speak to that instead of trying to reframe the topic.

 

[USAFRet]

NO sweetheart they are not. My point is that the devices are unreliable which is a fact. There is absolutely no excuse why a device should fail within 3 months and there is even less of an excuse for it to be the second time a device failed under warranty. Thank your for your obtuse response however.

The point I am making is the hard drives made by western digital are unreliable and they are junk. That is a FACT sunshine. If you have some evidence to the contrary than please provide it otherwise keep your opinions to yourself. You want to try to parse out that the data loss was my fault than you are missing the point of my post. The devices are junk. perhaps you should speak to that instead of trying to reframe the topic.

We as humans, have not yet been able to build a complex electronic device that will never fail, at a price point we are willing to pay for it.

Of my 3 last dead storage devices:

WD, 3TB. 5 weeks old. Went from good to dead in about 36 hours.
Replaced under warranty, 100% of data recovered from my backup.
Replacement going strong 6 years later.

Toshiba Enterprise, 16TB. 7 months old.
Started collecting bad sectors over a period of 4-5 days.
Replaced under warranty, 100% of the data replaced from my backup.
Replacement going strong a year later

SanDisk SATA III SSD, 960GB. 3 years, 33 days old.
Died literally instantly. Zero warning.
100% of the data recovered from my backup. Replaced under warranty, even though it was 33 days past the 3 year warranty.
Replacement going strong 4 years later.


So by your theory, I should avoid not only WD, but Toshiba and SanDisk as well.

My point above is that...drives die. Eventually, all of them.
WD is no better or worse than other brands. You can continue to think otherwise, but thats all on you.

Your data is your responsibility.
Physical drive fail should never incur more than a trivial amount of data loss, at most.

 

[USAFRet]

If you have some evidence to the contrary than please provide it otherwise keep your opinions to yourself.

https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html

Please point us to the part where they show that WD drives, as a brand, are significantly more unreliable than other brands.

There are, to be sure, a couple of outliers. Massively higher fail percentage.
Seagate 3TB from a few years ago.

But as a whole, all drive brands are pretty much the same.

 

[lentesta]

I think we need to reconsider the SanDisk Pro-G40 SSD. It's unreliable.

Installed mine a couple of nights ago on an M3 Mac. The drive freezes constantly, which is apparently a known issue just based on reading Amazon reviews.

Firmware seems up to date. I've contacted WD for support. Their own forums have multiple messages around the same issue. So at least for Macs, this is not a great recommendation.