Last Updated: November 13, 2018 The technology of external hard drives and connection ports is constantly changing which is why we’ve taken a closer look at the best external hard drive for Mac of 2018. The great thing for Mac users is that external HDDs have never been cheaper and storage sizes have never been bigger. Ten years ago, you would have paid several hundred dollars for a chunky hard drive with just a few Gigabytes (GB) of storage space on. Now you can get 5 Terabytes (TB) of portable storage (5000 GB) for little more than $100 – that’s enough to backup several Macs in one go in a portable external hard drive that can fit in your pocket. Getting an external hard drive can be useful for a variety of reasons.

Today external hard drives are available in all shapes and sizes. The best part is that they are affordable and offers high storage capacity. It is compatible with Apple Time Machine, but you use the drive interchangeably between the Mac and PC. For Mac users it is the perfect option for data.

The most common reason is if you’re and need somewhere to put all those photos and 4K videos from your or home movies from your. However, an external storage device is also useful if you want to setup a, experience or if you want to. If you’re in a hurry, check out the comparison table below for quick overview of our top picks. You’ll find more detailed reviews below and you can use the quick navigation links on the right to jump to the section you want. The Best External Hard Drives For Mac Compared WD My Passport Seagate Backup Plus Transcend Storejet M3 WD MyBook Desktop WD MyBook Desktop Duo Capacity 1-4TB 1-4TB 1-2TB 1-8TB 4-16TB Size Portable Portable Portable Desktop Desktop USB 2.0 USB 3.0/Thunderbolt RAID Warranty (years) 3 2 2 3 3 Password Protection/Encryption Tips On Macs & External Hard Drive Compatibility As many users have learned from bitter experience, it’s not all about price and size when it comes to external hard drives on Mac. Form flow for mac.

Here are some important things to consider before buying an external hard drive. Reliability Reliability is probably the most important consideration when purchasing an external hard drive for your Mac. The worse thing that can happen to an external storage device is disk failure.

When this happens, you’ve usually lost everything stored on it which can be a total disaster if you’ve got precious family photos or important documents on there. Most manufacturers will guarantee at least two years of reliability and the best manufacturers like Western Digital (WD) offer three years and OWC five years although in reality, all should far outlast this.

Generally, the longer the warranty, the more expensive the hard drive. However, any such guarantees are little compensation in terms of your precious data in the case of failure.

You will have lost all of your files anyway but at least you’ll get a free replacement from the manufacturer. Although manufacturers sometimes quote an of less than 1% (AFR is a percentage of its hard drives that fail annually) any figures on reliability aren’t worth basing your decision on in our opinion because everyone uses hard drives in different ways. For example, those that leave their external hard drives switched on all the time or use it constantly for video editing are going to experience more frequent failures than those that only switch them on occasionally for backups.

There are some important measures you can take however to reduce the chance of external hard drive failure on your Mac. Buy A Decent Brand This is probably the most important piece of advice when buying an external hard drive. There is definitely a difference between established brands and lesser known newcomers to the market. In 2018, the general consumer external hard drive market is dominated by two big players, Western Digital and Seagate, which have both been in the business over 20 years.

At MacHow2 we use Western Digital (WD) external hard drives on a regular basis and would not hesitate to recommend them such as the rock solid. Note that Hitachi drives are now owned by Western Digital so if you buy a Hitachi external hard drive, you’re effectively getting a Western Digital product. Seagate on the other hand used to be equally reliable although we’ve noticed more and more complaints about hard drive failures and customer service issues with them in recent years so our confidence in Seagate has reduced somewhat. However, Mac users should definitely avoid brands such as LaCie, Fujitsu and Toshiba which in our experience, can be very flaky and significantly more prone to mechanical failure. Of course, you’ll always find plenty of satisfied customers of these products too but in our experience and research, you’ll also find many more disgruntled ones too. In these reviews, we’ve only focused on reputable established brands in market that we know are reliable choices for Mac users.