The Best External Hard Drive for Mac With USB 3.0

One of the most common requests we get is for a review on the best external hard drive for Mac with USB 3.0 and since it’s the next big step and the best external hard drives really should have USB 3.0 now for the transfer speeds we’re happy to help. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the best external hard drive for Mac with USB 3.0 compatibility.

Best External hard Drive for Mac With USB 3.0 Compatibly

USB 3.0 is the latest version of the hugely popular USB connectivity standard. You can read a little more about the USB 3.0 upgrades over on Wikipedia or pretty much any technology site, but in a nutshell the latest version has three main features:

  • It has a much faster file transfer speed (up to 5 Gbit/s) which is about 10x faster than the older USB 2.0 standard.
  • It requires less power to operate which means less drain on your battery if using it with a notebook.
  • It’s backwards compatible still with the USB 2.0 ports
So basically it’s a huge improvement from the original standard and if you’re looking for an external hard drive you should look for something which supports USB 3.0.
So the external hard drive for mac we’d suggest is the WD My Passport Essentials External Hard Drive. We’ve reviewed this one before as a great hard drive and it does have 3.0 compatibility. We can’t really suggest anything else, it’s the best external hard drive for Mac and it happens to have a USB 3.0.

The Best External Hard Drive for Mac With USB 3.0 Featuresbest external hard drive for mac usb 3.0

List Price: $130 (although with the Amazon link above, it’s a lot cheaper)

Connectivity:  USB 3.0 (it wouldn’t be the best external hard drive with 3.0 if it didn’t have 3.0 although it is compatible with the older 2.0)

Capacity: A 1TB capacity which isn’t the biggest drive out there (like the 3TB drives we’ve reviewed) but it’s still easily enough room

Size: 4.3″x3.3″x0.7″

Weight: 7.1 Ounces

Platform: Both Mac and PC (which is helpful when you want to transfer files between different systems)
Power: USB (which means no external power cable and USB 3.0 takes very little power so you don’t need to worry about laptop power)
Other: It does everything you would want from an external hard drive and it does it at a fraction of the cost compared to a lot of other brands
Normally I want to point out at least one alternative but really this is the best external hard drive for Mac that use’s USB 3.0 and it’s also a great price, there’s nothing else I can actually think to suggest.
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