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Buying an external hard drive or solid-state drive for your Mac is much like buying one for your Windows PC; most computers of either stripe now have at least one oval USB-C port for drive connections. The main difference? Some drives designed for Macs use the pro-focused Thunderbolt interface for super-fast data transfers. Do you just want to back up using Time Machine or stash an extensive video collection? An inexpensive non-Thunderbolt drive not meant explicitly for Macs should suffice. We've been testing PC storage for four decades, and for every drive we review, our analysts run standardized benchmark tests measuring speed and program launch times, and assess drives on design, bundled software, cost per gigabyte, and more. Our top general-use external SSD for Macs is Crucial's X9 Pro, but below is a breakdown of other favorite tested picks, plus all the shopping advice you need.
Our Top Tested Picks
Crucial X9 Pro
Samsung Portable SSD T9
WD My Passport, Works with USB-C (6TB)
SanDisk Professional G-Drive ArmorATD
LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle
LaCie 2big RAID
SanDisk Desk Drive
The Best External Hard Drive Deals This Week*
- Samsung T7 Shield 4TB Portable USB-C Solid-State Drive — $297.64 (List Price $499.99)
- WD Elements 16TB Desktop External USB 3.0 Hard Drive — $279.99 (List Price $309.99)
- SanDisk 1TB Extreme Pro USB-C Portable Solid-State Drive — $117.25 (List Price $149.99)
- LaCie Rugged Mini 2TB Portable USB 3.0 Hard Drive — $89.00 (List Price $99.99)
- Seagate Portable 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive — $111.08 (List Price $124.99)
*Deals are selected by our commerce team
Best General-Use External SSD for Mac
Crucial X9 Pro
- Lightweight and compact
- Good PCMark 10 benchmark score
- IP55-rated for dust and water resistance
- Drop-proof up to 7.5 feet
- 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption
- Five-year warranty
- Included USB-C cable is short
- Lacks USB-C-to-A cable or adapter
A tiny yet highly capable external SSD, the Crucial X9 Pro scored well in our benchmarks and comes in capacities up to 4TB. Its interface supports the USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard, which affords near-universal compatibility if your computer has a USB port (although you’ll need an adapter to connect to a USB-A port). With native exFAT formatting, it works out of the box with Mac, Windows, Android, iPad, PC, Linux, Xbox, and PlayStation. The X9 Pro’s basic ruggedization features and 256-bit AES encryption protect it from tumbles and both meteorological and human threats while traveling.
The Crucial X9 Pro is a competitively priced, highly portable external solid-state drive that should appeal to almost anyone. It's compatible out of the box with a wide variety of devices, making it great for travelers or, indeed, anyone who wants a fast, reasonably rugged, and secure portable SSD.
Best High-Speed External SSD for Mac
Samsung Portable SSD T9
- Exceptional speed over USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbps) connections
- Comes in capacities up to 4TB
- Supports 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption
- Certified drop-proof
- Includes useful Samsung Magician software
- A bit pricey
- May require an expansion card to achieve Gen 2x2 speeds
The Samsung Portable SSD T9 is a high-performance external drive, offered in capacities up to 4TB and with an interface that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, which is blazing fast if you have a Mac with a port that supports this standard. It was fast with our Windows testbed (which has a 2x2 expansion card) and surprisingly quick when tested with an older MacBook Pro with a Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 Gen 2 port. AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption, the gold standard in civilian encryption solutions, and an upgraded Samsung Magician software suite sweeten the deal.
Billed as a drive for creators, the Samsung Portable SSD T9 is a smart choice for Mac users who need to access or back up large files quickly. Available in sizes up to 4TB, it’s a potent drive for content creators and other power users, and it also works with Windows and Android devices.
Best Rugged External SSD for Mac
LaCie Rugged SSD Pro
- Field-leading speed
- Also works with USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2 ports
- Extreme ruggedness against dust, water, drops, crush pressure
- Five-year warranty
- High price per gigabyte
- Cable is a bit short
The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro takes a Seagate FireCuda NVMe solid-state drive, connects it to a Thunderbolt 3 interface, and puts it in a silicone-wrapped, crush-resistant aluminum case with a colossal IP67 ruggedness rating—dust-tight and able to survive 30 minutes in shallow water, even if you forget to close the rubber flap over the Thunderbolt 3 port. That adds up to a somewhat specialized device, best appreciated by videographers shooting outdoors with Mac laptops, but with a terrific mix of speed and sturdiness.
The LaCie isn't cheap; more general-purpose portable solid-state drives and even a few rugged rivals beat its price per gigabyte. But it's tailor-made for Apple content creators shooting and working in the great outdoors.
Best Portable Hard Drive for Mac
WD My Passport, Works with USB-C (6TB)
- 6TB is current peak capacity for a portable hard drive
- Includes Acronis True Image backup software
- 256-bit AES encryption
- Good benchmark results for a portable platter-based drive
- USB-C compatibility requires included adapter
- Platter drives are inherently slow compared with external SSDs
The WD My Passport USB-C is available with the highest capacity (6TB) of any pocketable spinning hard drive on the market today. Despite its name, it connects via a USB Micro-B port—its included cable is a Micro-B-to-USB-Type-A, and it also comes with an A-to-C dongle for connecting to a computer's USB-C port. It comes formatted in exFAT for compatibility with both macOS and Windows. Its speeds on our benchmarks were actually a little faster than the similar 6TB WD My Passport Ultra with its native USB-C port—though still far below those of portable SSDs—and it's priced a little lower.
Old-school hard drives survive in this age of superfast portable SSDs due to their low cost per gigabyte—the 6TB WD My Passport USB-C lists at a minuscule 3.2 cents per gig. It brings the highest capacity available in a portable hard drive, making it a decent repository for media files. Acronis True Image backup software and 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption further sweeten the deal. This drive is a winner for Mac users who seek high capacity and value in a platter hard drive and appreciate built-in software and security features.
Best Rugged Portable Hard Drive for Mac
SanDisk Professional G-Drive ArmorATD
- Rugged enough to protect from the elements, with rubberized sheath and port cover
- Attractive design
- Ideal for use with macOS
- Both USB-C and USB-A cables bundled
- Competitive pricing
- Lacks software suite and hardware-based encryption
- Requires reformatting for use with Windows
The SanDisk Professional G-Drive ArmorATD is a cost-effective, semi-rugged external hard drive with capacities of up to 5TB. As a spinning (5,400rpm) platter drive, its speed can't compare with a solid-state drive's, but it fills a niche for travelers or mobile workers who need lots of capacity for their dollar. With a rubber bumper and internal shock mounts, the ArmorATD is rated to survive up to 1,000 pounds of pressure or a drop from 3.3 feet. Its ingress protection (IP) rating of IP54 promises some security against sand and rain. It comes formatted in Mac-friendly HFS+, one of two formats (along with APFS) compatible with the macOS Time Machine backup system.
Like other products in the SanDisk Professional line, the G-Drive ArmorATD is heavily geared to Mac use. It's best for traveling Mac users who want a drive that can withstand a tumble or a rainstorm and has a higher capacity for the price than an SSD.
Best Portable Hard Drive With RAID Speed for Mac
LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle
- Flat, easily mailable chassis.
- Can set to RAID 0 for higher speed and capacity, or to RAID 1 for drive mirroring.
- Bundled cables for USB Type-A and Type-C on PC side.
- No tab over Type-C connector to protect it from dust and water.
- High price per gigabyte, due largely to ruggedization and RAID design.
LaCie's two-drive Rugged RAID Shuttle provides 8TB of capacity and fast performance (in striped mode) or 4TB of capacity with all data mirrored on the second disk. It's ideal for anyone who works in the field and produces mountains of data. Its crush-resistant gray brushed-aluminum case houses two physical drives, with a choice of RAID settings prioritizing performance or on-the-fly backup. The unit meets the IP54 dust and water resistance spec and is rated to survive a four-foot drop. It fits easily in a gear bag or a padded overnight express envelope to let pros send files to the office or studio when data connections are slow or nonexistent.
Designed with creative professionals such as filmmakers, photographers, and musicians in mind, the LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle is aimed at anyone who works in the field and produces large amounts of data they can't afford to lose. Out of the box, the LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle is formatted in exFAT, ensuring both Mac and Windows compatibility. It delivers an unmatched balance of performance, capacity, and data protection.
Best Small Desktop RAID Hard Drive for Mac
LaCie 2big RAID
- Can use RAID 0 for higher speed and capacity, RAID 1 for drive mirroring, or JBOD (RAID off).
- Five-year warranty with five years of Data Rescue recovery.
- Drives are hot-swappable.
- High price per gigabyte.
- Need to download utilities to manage the drive.
- Kensington lock slot secures only the case, leaving the drives easily removable.
The LaCie 2big RAID external hard drive, aimed squarely at videographers, photographers, and other content creators, earns kudos for design excellence. The handsome gray and black case houses two spinning-platter drives—4TB each in the 8TB version we tested. You can configure the 2big so your computer sees it as two separate 4TB drives, a single 8TB drive with faster performance, or a 4TB drive automatically mirrored or backed up to a second. You can also hot-swap drives, easily sliding an old one out and a new one in without tools and without turning the LaCie unit off.
The 2big RAID array promises reliability and delivers the performance benefit you'd expect from 7,200rpm platters, magnified by the default RAID 0 setting. The optional RAID 1 setting is available if you want data redundancy. (A JBOD mode is also available if you don't want to use RAID.)
The LaCie 2big RAID desktop array, which ships formatted in exFAT for Mac and Windows compatibility, offers cavernous capacity to creative types and others who need to work with massive amounts of data. When we reviewed it, it was available in capacities up to 16TB, but the company has since added even higher volumes, up to a monstrous 40TB.
Best Desktop SSD for Mac
SanDisk Desk Drive
- Comes in capacities up to 8TB, with 16TB planned
- Solid benchmark performance
- Includes free download of Acronis True Image backup software
- A little pricey on a per-gigabyte basis
- Heavy and bulky for an external SSD
- Requires use of included power adapter
The SanDisk Desk Drive is an external solid-state drive for use with a Mac or Windows desktop or laptop workstation and is a fine substitute for a spinning external hard drive. Available in capacities up to 8TB (with a 16TB model to come), it comes formatted in Mac-friendly exFAT and includes a download for Acronis True Image backup software. It aced our PCMark 10 Overall general-storage benchmark and did well in the 3DMark Storage gaming-centric test.
Its bulk and reliance on an AC adapter make it less than ideal for portable use, but the SanDisk Desk Drive provides abundant, speedy storage when paired with a Mac at a fixed location, whether a desktop or a laptop workstation. It has a relatively high cost per gigabyte, but most external SSDs aren't even offered at its 8TB capacity, let alone the 16TB model that SanDisk promises.
What File System Is Best for a Mac External Hard Drive?
We mentioned Thunderbolt up top. Before we get to Thunderbolt, we need to address a fundamental building block of hard drives that has always affected compatibility and probably always will: the file system.
An external drive's file system is the most critical factor in determining whether it's readable by Macs, PCs, or both. Starting with macOS "High Sierra," Cupertino ditched its venerable Mac OS Extended file system, commonly abbreviated as HFS+, and switched to an entirely new file system. It's simply called the Apple File System (APFS), the first format used across both Macs and iOS devices.
What Is the Difference Between Mac OS Extended and APFS?
You'll find many benefits to switching from HFS+ to APFS, including better security thanks to native encryption, but the most essential thing to note for external-drive shoppers is backward-compatibility. Any drive formatted with HFS+ will work just fine with a Mac that's running High Sierra or later.
Neither Apple File System nor HFS+ works with Windows, however. If you plan to use your external drive with computers that run both operating systems, you should consider formatting your drive with the exFAT file system. You won't get the security and efficiency of APFS, but you will get the convenience of transferring files back and forth between Windows and macOS simply by plugging in and unplugging your drive.
Of course, you can easily wipe and reformat most external drives, so you're not limited to buying only those intended for use with Macs. If you really fancy a consumer-oriented drive formatted for Windows (which will usually come pre-formatted in the NTFS format), you can use the macOS Disk Utility to reformat it after you bring it home from the store. Some highly specialized external drives might not work with Macs even if they're formatted correctly, but consumers looking for extra space simply to store backups or extensive video collections aren't likely to encounter them.
External Drives: SSDs vs. Spinning Platters
Once you've settled on a file system, you must determine which storage medium you want: solid-state or spinning disk. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and—unlike the file system—the type you buy is the type you're stuck with for the life of the drive.
A solid-state drive (SSD) offers quick access to your data because it stores your bits in a type of flash memory rather than on spinning platters. SSDs are often smaller and lighter than spinning external drives, as well, which is also thanks to the lack of moving parts. Most fit into a jacket or pants pocket, which makes them a better choice if you're looking for a portable external drive that you'll be carrying with you frequently. (See our overall picks for favorite external SSDs.)
One major downside, however, is that they're more expensive. You could pay more than 20 cents per gigabyte for an SSD, while spinning drives can be had for less than 10 cents per gigabyte—and often much less. External SSDs also have lower capacity limits, with most drives topping out at either 2TB or 4TB. Compare that with external spinning drives, which are easy to find even in capacities in excess of 8TB for desktop-style drives or up to 5TB for portable ones.
For professional videographers who edit lots of 4K footage and gamers or movie buffs who have large libraries of multi-gigabyte titles, an external RAID array made up of multiple platter-based drives is worth considering since it combines speed approaching that of an SSD with the gargantuan possible capacities of spinning drives. An array contains two or more drives that all work together to increase throughput or guard your precious files against corruption via drive redundancy if one of the drives fails. (Or both; it depends on how the array is set up.) The result is that you can get SSD-like speeds, with throughput of more than 400MBps, and capacities that top out close to 50TB. You'll pay handsomely, of course—some Mac-specific arrays cost thousands of dollars.
On the other hand, if you're looking to buy an external drive mainly to back up your files (which you should definitely do), and it will rarely leave your home office, an inexpensive spinning drive will work just fine. These come in both portable and "desktop" versions.
The portables are obviously smaller and based on the kinds of 2.5-inch platter drives used in laptops. Desktop-style external hard drives are larger and based on the beefier and more capacious 3.5-inch drives used in full-size desktop PCs. They require their own AC power source. Portable drives don't have a power plug; they get the juice they need to run through their data interface.
Does Thunderbolt Matter, or Will USB-C Do?
So, to recap: Faster, smaller (both physically and in terms of gigabytes) solid-state drives come at a premium, while spinning drives offer a much better value while sacrificing speed. But what happens when you throw yet another variable into the mix: the connection between your drive and your Mac? As you might have guessed, the answer is more trade-offs.
Every current Mac comes with oval-shaped USB Type-C ports that support Thunderbolt speeds. Some Macs have Thunderbolt 4, while older ones have Thunderbolt 3, but both have the same maximum 40GBps maximum throughput, which is many times the speed of regular USB-C ports.
Unfortunately, you won't find all that many Thunderbolt-compatible drives on the market. Some Mac-specific drives are even still sold with USB 3.0 connectors. Moreover, the Thunderbolt drives you can buy are constrained by the maximum throughput of the drive itself rather than the Thunderbolt interface. Until a few years ago, most external SSDs topped out at around 600MBps, for instance, due to the bus types used by the drives inside the chassis. That's more than fast enough for backups and occasionally transferring multi-gigabyte files but considerably lower than Thunderbolt's maximum throughput.
However, that speed ceiling is rising. While older external SSDs have been limited by the internal electronics (generally a drive and controller using the older Serial ATA bus inside the drive), late-model drives use different internal components based on PCI Express drives using the NVMe protocol. These kinds of components in newer drives help Thunderbolt reach more of its speed potential. Drives with rated peak reads and writes in the 1,000MBps to 3,500MBps range indicate one of these PCI Express/NVMe drives. (Again, see our roundup of the best external SSDs for more discussion of this.)
You can insist on Thunderbolt support if you know you need all the speed you can get, but a USB-C drive will be a better pick if you're more price-sensitive or need to use the drive with a PC. With USB-only drives, some manufacturers include a USB Type-C cable for people who own a USB Type-C-only Mac, and you can always pick up a converter for a few dollars online if the drive you're eyeing doesn't offer one. And don't forget that some recent Macs, such as the Mac Studio, come with USB 3.1 ports, so they won't require adapters.
Can I Use Any External Hard Drive for a Mac?
Drives intended for PCs sometimes come bundled with software that isn't compatible with macOS, but that doesn't mean you can't use such drives with Macs as long as you format them correctly, as mentioned above. This essentially means that you can use almost any external hard drive with a Mac, even if it doesn't specifically say that it's Mac-compatible. As for the drive's software, you can often replicate it using features built into macOS. For example, some drives come with software that automatically backs up your files to the drive when connected. Such software isn't as much of a consideration for Mac users, who already have an excellent built-in backup option in the form of Time Machine. (See our guide to using Time Machine for backups.)
Unless your drive is never going to leave your home or office, you should also consider its physical durability. Rugged, waterproof drives are a fine option not just for surfers and BMX riders, as their marketing suggests, but also for people carrying their drives to and from school or work, where they might occasionally get spilled on or dropped on the floor. (Check out our favorite rugged drives.)
Finally, you might want to consider how the drive will look when plugged into your Mac. Some drives come in a variety of colors, and many others feature copious amounts of aluminum and industrial-chic styling to match the design cues of your MacBook or iMac.
Ready to Buy the Right External Hard Drive for Your Mac?
We've selected a host of our favorite drives, all of which were tested on Windows and macOS systems. For more options, check out our main list of best external hard drives and our top picks for external SSDs.
