12 Of The Best External Hard Drives Perfect For Any Budget And Any Need

Best External Hard Drives

External hard drives have become a must-have in an age of ultra hi-def video combined with sleek devices that don’t offer a lot of upfront memory. In short, bros, you need a thingy to hold all your stuff. The best external hard drives do this, and they do it quickly, so you’re not sitting around all day waiting for your files to backup.

Of course, you might not need as much space as your chan-loving neighbor who has 10TB of tentacle anime in various digital vaults. Or you might not want to pay for the very, very best because you just need something small and simple to hold a few important documents. Or you might need to store the entire universe. Whatever your needs, you’ll find it in one of these, the twelve best external hard drives available on Amazon.

Toshiba Canvio Basics
Best External Hard Drives

This portable hard drive gives you 1TB of space and offers interface speeds up to 5GB/second. It’s not the biggest, it’s not the fastest, but here’s the thing: for regular, everyday users who just need to back up their files, it’s big enough and it’s fast enough. It’s also affordable enough. If “enough” works for you, then this is perfect for you, as it’s a quality hard drive that does what you’ll need it to.

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WD 4TB Elements
Best External Hard Drives

Amazon lists this as their number one best seller in external hard drives. No frills here, just a lot of space for not a lot of dollars.

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Seagate Backup Plus
Best External Hard Drives

Another hard drive offering 4TB of space, this one is Amazon’s choice for the best external hard drive. Is it? I don’t know that I would go that far, but you can see why they picked it. 4TB for this price is a solid deal and it offers you customizable backup plans so you can tailor it to your needs. It’s also compatible with the Playstation 4 for you gamers out there.

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WD 4TB My Passport
Best External Hard Drives

This hard drive kicks things up a notch, offering an auto-backup, along with password encryption, which these days is, uh, kind of important. But really, it’s still all about getting 4TB for a reasonable price. That’s what this hard drive offers and it does it fitting in the palm of your hand.

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Toshiba Canvio Connect II
Best External Hard Drives

This pocket-sized hard drive gives you 1TB of space – again, probably not enough for a power user, but enough for ordinary users – and it allows for either your standard USB file transfers or for cloud transfers. But the best thing about this hard drive is the price. You simply won’t find a better quality (key word there) external hard drive for a better price.

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Silicon Power 1TB Rugged Armor
Best External Hard Drives

1TB of space is available to you here in one badass package. That’s because this portable hard drive is made to be military-grade shockproof. Basically, if your ride gets blown up in a convoy your data will still be safe. You might not be, but your pics and vids will survive. And, really, isn’t that what modern living is all about?

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Seagate Game Drive for Xbox
Best External Hard Drives

A lot of hard drives offer video game console functionality, but many times that means that you have to reformat the drive to use it with your game system. That’s a pain in the ass, so why not pick this bad boy up? It’s specifically designed to work with your Xbox, and given how much space games take up these days, you’re probably gonna need it. At 2TB, it will hold up to 50 Xbox One games, or you can upscale it to 4TB if you need even more space.

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Transcend External Hard Drive
Best External Hard Drives

Another rugged external hard drive, this one is designed with a three-stage shock resistant system, all of which adds up to be military-grade shockproof. It offers 1TB of space and gives you interface speeds of 5GB/second. There’s not a ton of difference here between this and the Silicon Power military-grade drive discussed earlier. Really, it just comes down to what you’re comfortable with. I will say that this one is slightly higher rated, while the Silicon Power drive has more reviews/more buys.

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WD 4TB My Book
Best External Hard Drives

This hard drive kicks things up a notch, promising ultra-fast transfer speeds along with 4TB of space. It also offers password encryption and is designed so that you can safely transfer all your files easily and fast. It’s a great hard drive for the intermediate user who needs something a little more heavy duty but doesn’t necessarily want to dive into the deep, deep end of the hard drive pool (which looks a lot like a bottomless wallet.) You can also upscale this to 6TB.

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CalDigit Tuff
Best External Hard Drives

Another intermediate external hard drive, this one offers you 2TB of space and interface speeds of up to 10GB/second. It’s also shock and dust resistant, so you don’t have to worry about it dying on you when you need to haul it around with you. Perhaps most amazingly, it was tested and found to work even after being submerged in three feet of water for a half hour. So… yeah, this is gonna take whatever you throw at it.

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Samsung T5 Portable SSD
Best External Hard Drives

If your eyes just lit up, that’s because you know what “SSD” stands for: solid state drive. That means that there are no moving parts. All your data is stored on a microchip, and it doesn’t need to physically move around to read/write your data. The upshot to all this? It’s much faster and it’s more stable. All that is great, but it also means that it’s a lot more expensive. This is the best SSD deal out there. You can also go big with 2TB, and if that’s what you need, great. Go for it. But I also wanted to offer something a little more affordable to people, and, well, here you go.

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LaCie 5Big Thunderbolt 2
Best External Hard Drives

10TB. That’s what’s available in this monster. It also offers the fastest transfer speeds that you’re gonna find, dual ports for daisy-chaining, and a variety of badass features that add up to make this the best external hard drive available. It’s made for hardcore types and people who need something powerful to handle stuff like 4K video editing. This is a professional tool that will make your life so much easier. Of course, it’s also really, really expensive, but this is an investment in your career and in yourself. Or just a really, really badass toy.

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The BroBible team writes about gear that we think you want. Occasionally, we write about items that are a part of one of our affiliate partnerships and we will get a percentage of the revenue from sales.