There are so many options for hard drives and external storage in general these days. But the external hard drive has remained popular due to their affordability, durability, and capacity. Of course, there are options cheaper, larger, and more resilient, but the external hard drive is the only solution that can balance those 3 advantages to offer a solution that works for almost any use-case.
We spoke to TechQuarters about hard drives and their importance in business. The company stated that, specifically in their line of IT managed services London businesses outsource, hard drives are a crucial tool for a range of tech support cases. Whether it is to back-up a computer, or to boot an operating system, hard drives have lots of purposes in the business tech world.
What makes a great external hard drive?
The advancement in storage technology means that hard drives are getting better every year, but there are still older technologies in use because of the robust nature – older hard drive technologies generally still have their place in modern business, for certain uses. Modern technologies being used in hard drives include solid state technology (ranging from SATA, m.2, NVMe), thunderbolt, USB-C, USB-3,
With all that said, the best external hard drives for modern business are still the ones that can balance capabilities such as capacity, and data transfer speeds, with qualities like durability, and of course price.
1. Seagate Backup Plus 4TB
This is a very well known, and well established brand of external hard drives. Seagate are arguably one of the leaders in affordable external storage, and the options they have for users is very extensive. As mentioned above, the best external hard drives are ones that balance performance with price and longevity, and Seagate have an excellent reputation for making hard drives that do just that.
The Seagate Backup Plus 4TB is not the most compact drive on this list, but its size and affordability make it an excellent external hard drive for a home office to store work resources. It connects with a standard USB cable, and is HDD meaning it is very reliable, if not necessarily the fastest option on the market. This model also offers plenty of capacity choices – you can even opt for the 5TB or 8TB options.
2. WD My Passport
The biggest competitor of Seagate in terms of reliable, affordable external storage would have to be WD (formerly known as Western Digital). The My Passport line of hard drives is very well known for the variety of colors and capacities available, giving customers plenty of choice to pick a drive that suits their preferences.
The WD My Passport drive is another HDD drive – a highly reliable format – and is the cheapest drive that delivers high quality performance (in other words, one of the best value HDD drives on the market). The drive uses a USB 3.2 connection, which is both reliable and promises decent data transfer speeds.
3. Sandisk Extreme 510
If you are looking for an external hard drive fit for a fast paced, on the go lifestyle, you could do a lot worse than the Sandisk Extreme 510. The first external SSD on the list – SSD (or solid state drive) contains no moving parts, meaning they generally are more durable, and also access information much quicker, resulting in quicker read/write speeds for the drive.
It has only been recently that external SSDs have hit the market, and so they are generally a bit more limited in terms of capacity. However, the Sandisk Extreme 510 comes in a respectable 1TB capacity, with data transfer speeds much faster than anything on the list so far. What is more, this model also offers data encryption, and the enclosure is shock resistance, meaning you data is protected both digitally and physically.
4. LaCie Rugged
This is probably the most visually recognizable external hard drive out there. The LaCie Rugged has a solid metal casing with a thick, removable rubber sleeve that makes it very resistant to drops and shocks, and the drive is pressure resistant. As well as this, the LaCie Rugged features some digital security features – this includes an automatic backup software, and data encryption.
Once again, this is a HDD, but it comes with several connectivity options, including USB-C, Thunderbolt, and Firewire.
5. Samsung 860 EVO
The final drive on our list is an SSD that is one of the few models on the market offering large capacities for such a good price. The Samsung 860 EVO can be bought with a whopping 4TB capacity. As mentioned above, SSDs tend to had better longevity, because they are not mechanical, and the read/write speeds are much faster – in the case of the Samsung 860 EVO, you can expect sequential read speeds of up to 550 Mb/s and sequential write speeds of up to 520 Mb/s. The Samsung 860 EVO uses V-NAND 3-bit MLC technology for its storage – this an extremely reliable technology; so reliable, in fact, that the drive comes with a 5-year warranty.
6. Sabrent Rocket Nano
If size and portable is an absolute priority for you, then there is one option that will appeal above all others. The Sabrent Rocket Nano is less than 3 inches long, less than 2 inches wide, and weighs about 2 ounces. This external hard drive is hardly bigger than a flash drive, and yet it packs in up to 2TB of capacity, with benchmark read speeds of up to 967 Mb/s. The drive uses the USB 3.2 connection.
