The Best Mac Hard Drives For 2018 Wirecutter

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But if you frequently move between locations, a portable external drive is the better choice.. It provides twice the speeds of standard USB 3 0 drives Updated May 19, 2020 We’ve tested even more portable hard drives, but the 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim is still the best portable hard drive for most people.. Pro evolution soccer 2018 for mac If you want a dependable external drive that has plenty of storage space for documents and photos and is easy to take on the go, get the.. Who this is forIf you’re not backing up the important documents and photos on your computer, you should start.. Right now, that means the 4 TB WD My Book Runner-UpIf the 4 TB My Book is out of stock or the price goes up, Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is a great and dependable alternative.. Wirecutter Best Portable Ssd(We recommend the similarly performing WD 8 TB Easystore if it’s the same price as – or cheaper than – the 8 TB My Book.. The 4 TB My Book is the most cost-effective drive we found at the time of our research and writing.. These factors aren’t dealbreakers, but they are good to keep in mind How we testedAfter narrowing our list of finalists by price and capacity, we tested four 4 TB desktop hard drives and three 8 TB models.. “I don’t bother it and it doesn’t bother me, and my computer is backed up, so that seems good.. You can read a more in-depth explanation of the programme at the HD Tune website.. Dragging and dropping files works just fine for manual backups, and your OS’s built-in backup utility suffices for automatic ones.. Using the included WD Discovery app, you can import your data from a cloud storage or social media account to your drive.. At this writing, it costs marginally more than the My Book, but prices fluctuate – if you find the Elements for less than the My Book, it’s a better buy.. After 20 hours of new research and testing, we found that the best external desktop hard drive for most people is Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book.. We found just 21 reported failures out of 358 Amazon reviews of the 4 TB model, or 6%.. Our pick: WD My Book (4 TB)our pickWestern Digital’s 4 TB My Book is the best desktop hard drive for most people because it’s reliable and it offers the best balance of speed and price.. Most of the drives we tested performed similarly, with the 4 TB WD My Book having a slight edge in most of our tests.. You can also use WD Drive Utilities to check for potential drive failures, major performance problems, and bad sectors on the My Book.. If you need more storage: WD My Book (8 TB)Also GreatIf you want more space – say, you have a tonne of large photos or videos or an existing media library and need room to expand in the future – Western Digital’s 8 TB My Book is the best option.. It should sit on your desk, quietly spinning away, storing and backing up your data without a lot of setup or ongoing maintenance.. It’s also less expensive than the other 8 TB drives we tested, and it has the longest warranty.. But that omission isn’t a dealbreaker because dragging and dropping files or using some other free backup programme is an equally good option.. The My Book is reliable, fast and less expensive than the other desktop drives we tested, plus it has enough space for your future storage needs and a long, three-year warranty.. Neither of these research methods is a perfect indicator of the My Book’s reliability, but they are the best we have.. By Justin Krajeski This post was done in partnership with When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission.. And when we backed up to the Elements with Time Machine, it was the second-fastest drive we tested, falling just behind our top pick.. 7 MB/s slower, and it took about five seconds longer to transfer a Blu-ray film, but those differences were within the margin of error.. According to statistics from cloud backup service Backblaze, hard drives are most likely to fail either within the first 18 months of use or after three years.. Senior editor Nathan Edwards has owned the 6 TB version of the drive for about a year: “It’s quieter than my old backup drive and relatively good-looking,” he said.. That’s a lower failure rate than our top pick has, but the Elements has roughly half as many reviews at this writing, so the reported failure rate may not be comparable.. In HD Tune tests, the Elements had a slightly slower write speed compared with our top pick, but the two models’ read speeds were even.. If your drive dies and you have a cloud backup, you won’t lose data, but restoring from the cloud will take a very long time.. Scroll in exclusive partnership withThis guide was written by the editorial staff of Wirecutter (A New York Times Company).. This method has shortcomings: for one, people are more likely to post a review when they have a problem.. Like our top pick, the higher-capacity WD My Book has a low, 6% reported failure rate (judging from Amazon reviews), and it performed the best of the three 8 TB options we tested.. They’re also designed to withstand a little more abuse (although one bump can still lead to failure).. And it had the fastest Time Machine backup score of all the 4 TB drives we tested.. Though it’s cheaper per terabyte than the other My Book models, it still costs more overall at this writing, so we recommend it only if you know you need that much space.. You should consider replacing your backup drives between the third and sixth year of use.. Although a higher-capacity drive is more cost-effective per terabyte, 8 TB external desktop hard drives are nearly twice as expensive as 4 TB drives, for more storage than most people need.. Although prices on hard drives fluctuate frequently, our pick was the least expensive in its competitive field.. Because they perform so similarly, we recommend getting the cheapest desktop hard drive you can find from a trustworthy maker.. Because the Easystore is usually more expensive, we think the My Book is the better 8 TB choice for most people’s needs.. This model lacks backup software, though, and it has a shorter, two-year warranty.. We also timed the file transfer of a 45 5 GB rip of a Blu-ray movie from start to finish, running each transfer three times and determining the average to rule out performance hiccups.. A hard drive that supports this software makes it easy for you to backup all your files in it.. How we pickedIdeally, an external hard drive is something you don’t notice much.. WD backs the 4 TB My Book with a three-year warranty, longer coverage than the competition offers.. Just backing up to one or the other isn’t enough – having both on-site and cloud backups ensures that your data stays safe from localised threats such as fire, theft or natural disaster, as well as internet outages or disruptions to the cloud backup provider.. They’re more expensive per terabyte than bigger desktop models, and they’re a bit slower, but portable hard drives are smaller and lighter than desktop drives and don’t need an additional power adapter.. Most of the external hard drives we tested have two-year warranties, but some have three-year warranties.. Backblaze’s 2017 report notes that WD’s 4 TB drives had a low, 2 2% annualised failure rate.. Your computer’s internal drive will stop working someday, and unless your data is backed up, it’ll be gone forever.. Although no hard drive is immune from failure, the WD My Book has proven reliable.. In our testing, the Elements was about as quick as the 4 TB My Book, falling behind in our Blu-ray transfer test by only five seconds.. The Elements is about as fast as our top pick: in our tests, its average write speed was 7.. Wirecutter staffers have used the WD My Book (in varying capacities) with no issue.. If you spend most of your time working at one desk, you should get a desktop external drive.. Speed: Most of the drives we’ve tested in 2018 are about the same speed, and we haven’t seen major speed increases in desktop hard drives over the past few years.. (That drive, however, costs more )In HD Tune testing, the 4 TB WD My Book had a read speed of 143.. For each one, we ran HD Tune Pro, a benchmarking programme that tests transfer speeds and access time across the entire disk.. Most of the drives performed similarly in these tests, except for the 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub, which was notably slower.. 8 megabytes per second and a write speed of 138 4 MB/s, operating a little faster than most of the competition.. The 8 TB My Book is just as reliable as our top pick, and it was about as fast in our Blu-ray and HD Tune tests, but about four minutes slower in our Time Machine testing.. About 5% of drives fail in the first 18 months of use, with the failure rate dipping to about 1.. In our Blu-ray transfer test, all of the 4 TB drives we tested were within the margin of error of one another, but the 5 TB Toshiba Canvio was about 30 seconds faster than the competition.. (In addition, you can use it to permanently erase all the data on your drive ) You can activate 256-AES encryption by downloading WD’s Security software, enabling it, and setting a password.. It was about as fast as the competition in all of our tests, and it has a longer warranty (three years) than the other contenders.. Useful software: Backup software is a nice perk, but you can find lots of free alternatives and other great options for online backup services.. 5% for another 18 months At three years of service, the failure rate jumps to almost 12%.. This round, we considered only those drives with USB 3 0 connections Anything faster isn’t necessary for hard drives, because they’re limited by disk speed, not the USB interface.. These are the features you should look for in a desktop hard drive, in rough order of importance:Reliability: Although reliability is the most important factor for any storage device, solid information on drive reliability can be hard to come by.. But this approach is the best we have for now We also looked at Backblaze’s hard drive reliability ratings from 2017, which are based on more than 90,000 drives the company uses in its cloud backup servers.. Like our top pick, this drive did not get hot during testing, although it did make a little humming noise from time to time.. If you don’t need the extra features such software provides, setting it up on every computer you use isn’t worth the time and effort.. Capacity: We focused on 4 TB hard drives because of their balance of value and total cost.. Since many desktop drives nowadays offer similar performance, the less expensive they are, the better.. Our pickAll of the desktop drives we tested this year were good We found the speed differences between them to be small: all but one of our finalists performed within about 20 seconds of one another when transferring a Blu-ray movie, and all completed a Time Machine backup within four minutes of one another.. The drive did not get hot during our testing, and although this My Book occasionally made a low humming noise while we moved files around, we don’t think that’s cause for concern – all of the drives we tested make some noise.. We also have an 8 TB pick for people who need more storage Warranty and customer service: A good warranty is important in case you get a lemon.. A desktop external hard drive is a great local backup for a computer that mostly stays parked on a desk.. It has the same software as our top pick too, but its warranty is only two years – one year less than the My Book’s coverage.. Only three companies still manufacture hard drives – Western Digital (which also makes HGST drives), Seagate and Toshiba – and all of them make reliable drives.. Also greatIf you need more storage, we recommend the Western Digital 8 TB My Book.. But all hard drives die The vast majority of drives from these major manufacturers will be fine, but it’s still possible to buy a bad egg that will die too soon.. It’s a reliable drive, although it isn’t quite as fast as our top pick The difference in transfer time wasn’t substantial in any of our tests, though, and it costs about the same as the My Book per terabyte.. We also made note of drive noise and extra USB ports as we tested the external desktop hard drives.. Currently the 8 TB My Book costs significantly more than our top pick, though, so we recommend it only if you want the extra storage.. The best external hard drive needs to support time machine This is the default backup software that runs on Macs.. Backup servers are a very different environment than a box on your desk: bare drives in servers are accessed more often and are subject to more vibrations and more heat, whereas drives in desktop enclosures have more potential points of failure between the power connector, the USB connector and the USB-to-SATA logic board.. Because all of the drives we tested are good, we recommend you buy the cheapest option available if prices change.. To spot any widespread reliability issues, we read through Amazon reviews for each of the drives we tested, and we counted the number of reported drive failures.. Finally, we timed how long each external hard drive took to back up with Time Machine on a 2016 MacBook Pro.. ”The Best Mac Hard Drives For 2018 Wire Cutter ToolRunner-up: WD Elements (4 TB)runner-upIf the 4 TB My Book is unavailable, or if its price goes up, WD’s 4 TB Elements desktop drive is a great second choice.. Read the full We’ve spent hundreds of hours researching and testing external drives to find the best options for any use and budget.. Responsive customer service is important too, in case you have trouble backing up your data.. The products in it are independently reviewed Scroll in may earn a commission when any of the products are purchased online through the links below.. The WD Elements has a two-year warranty, one year less than our top pick, and it doesn’t come with any backup software.. Price: We found that most people buy 4 TB and 8 TB drives by looking at Amazon reviews for our top picks.. Fortunately, backing up your data is easy, and getting started takes only a few minutes: read our advice and set up a system that will back up your files automatically both to an external hard drive and the cloud.. Also, because of the limited information available in some reviews, it can be hard to differentiate between hardware failures and software issues or user errors that could cause problems with a drive.. The Best Mac Hard Drives For 2018 Wire Cutter ToolWirecutter Best Portable SsdWirecutter Best External DriveIf you want to make use of your Mac's Thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for Macs.. The Elements is about as reliable as the 4 TB My Book We found just five reported failures out of 168 Amazon reviews for the Elements 4 TB option, giving this external hard drive a 3% failure rate.. At four years, the failure rate is 20% Judging from five years of data, Backblaze estimates that more than half of hard drives will last six years.. Other World ComputingLacieThe Best Mac Hard Drive For 2018 WirecutterOther World ComputingLacieThe Best Mac Hard Drive For 2018 WirecutterThe 8 best external hard drives and SSDs for Mac and PC users in 2018 By Matt Hanson 2018-11-08T16:27:58Z Graphic design If you have lots of creative work to store, making sure you have the best external hard drive or SSD for your Mac or PC is essential.. About half the drives we tested for this update are new, so they didn’t have many Amazon reviews.. Even so, the Backblaze study is the largest, most recent sample of hard drive failures we have access to, and it’s always a fascinating read. a5171a3e95