Picking The Best External Hard Drive for Mac
There’s at least a dozen reasons why you might want the best external hard drive for mac. Maybe your origianl hard drive is running out of space and you don’t want to have to open your computer to add a second. Maybe you want to be able to share files between different computers or ferry things between work and home. Or maybe you need a way to back things up safely and keep it seperate from your files.
I was working on a site once, much like the one you’re reading right now (although it wasn’t about external hard drives) and I saved the work I’d made and went to bed for the night. When I came back to it my hard drive had died and repair was near impossible. From the week or so of work I’d had sitting saved on that hard drive, I got maybe a few hours back.
Is There A Best External Hard Drive for Mac Available?
But the answer isn’t usually as simple as just getting yourself an external hard drive for mac anymore. Somewhere along the line someone made an external hard drive for mac and people loved it. Then another company made one, and another. Before long the market was overrun with cheap knock off hard drives. Now to be honest I’d never say there was any one external hard drive I would say is the one best external hard drive for mac because honestly I’m not sure such a thing exists. I mean there’s so many drives around and a lot of them offer different features and it can be pretty hard to actually compare them properly.
So there might not be a single brand or model that’s the best external hard drive for mac – there’s certainly a way to find the best external hard drives for mac which will suit your needs. There’s really a few things I tend to look for, and they’re pretty much the same thing anyone should look for.if you want to get the right thing.
- Compatibility – I tend to look for the best external hard drive for mac and PC so I can move files between both. If you just have a Mac then this might not be such a big deal, but you still need to make sure that whichever external hard drive you do get works for your mac.
- Connections – The majority of external hard drives (any drives that would be considered anywhere near the best external hard drives) will have a USB connection which makes it easy to use. Some also have Firewire connections but it’s unlikely you’ll need to worry about that.
- Transfer speeds – The speed of the transfer depends on the speed of the hard drive itself and the connection (for example USB 2.0 or 3.0).
- Reliability – as a general rule of thumb, the better the name the more reliable the drive. If you’re using the external hard drive to backup important files this is what I tend to look at. I don’t mind how slow the files transfer or what kind of connections it has. I just want something I can trust to not break down on me.
There are so many make and models you can look at, in fact this entire site has nothing but hard drives you can use. The following video shows a basic unboxing review. There’s a lot of newer (and better) models of hard drives than the one shown in the video but it is a good example of an unboxing. Basically it’s exactly what you’d expect from the name, the video maker looks at the hard drive and gives a review fresh out of the box. They don’t hurt to see but it’s not always the best way to review a hard drive – especially if you’re looking for long term drives. I like to use a mix of an unboxing and reviews from people who have owned a hard drive model for a good time and are still getting great results from it.
A Best External Hard Drive for Mac Example
Now you know the basic ideas of how to judge and find yourself the best external hard drive for mac, have a look at our reviews to find the one you want!



Is it hard to get an external hard drive setup?