The 6 best external drives from 2019

Best external backup hard drive: WD My Passport 4 TB

This hard drive has been on the market for a while, but it is still very successful. Although it is a bit or two times slower than other backup disks (such as our runner-up, for example), this disk still manages to keep up with the more modern disks (price / performance technically) when writing small files.

When sequentially writing data (large files), the disk will have to leave some competitors behind, but here too the low price makes it worthwhile. This disk may not be flashy or super fast, but for most people who only make backups once a month and then put them back in a drawer, those things don’t matter so much when it comes to price, capacity and reliability .

WD offers nothing special like LaCie’s dual FAT / NTFS or HFS + partitioning program, but you can use the Windows OS X or Linux system programs for that. WD does offer backup software; a utility for checking status and securely erasing the disk and encryption software for handling sensitive data. This is a very nice software bundle given that My Passport is essentially the company’s entry-level USB drive.

Best Runner-up Seagate Backup Plus Portable

Seagate’s slightly larger and slightly faster Backup Plus Portable is a beautiful runner up. Just like the WD above, it is a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps) drive. It is a disk with a maximum capacity of 5TB in a single disk and can also be used in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB. There is even a “fast” 4TB version that uses two hard disks in RAID for better performance.

In our tests of the 4TB version, we found the Seagate a little faster with large file transfers (think of movies) but slower with small file transfers (think of Office documents). However, it is still a worthy runner-up.

Seagate offers an installation tool that allows you to register, download the Seatools or Dashboard backup tools, and guarantee data recovery for $ 10 for two years or $ 15 for three years. There is no security software bundled with this disk. If you want to protect with a password, look at WD and others or use the encryption options of your operating system.

Unlike the other disks in this article, the Backup Plus Ultra Slim, as the name suggests, is nice and flat with 9.6 mm. With a full plastic housing, the Seagate drive is lightweight, yet well built to withstand impact. The top of the case has a nice pattern.

In Windows you get a total of 1863 GB (1.8 TB) of storage space. The drive comes with a two-year warranty and contains no hardware encryption.

The disc is supplied with the Seagate Dashboard software. You can set up a regular PC backup via the software, but you can also make a backup of your mobile phone and share content directly on social media. There is also the option to link cloud storage to the drive, where you get 200GB of free storage with Microsoft’s OneDrive for two years. You can also use Dropbox and Google Drive to back up your files.

Best performance: Samsung T5 SSD

If you prefer speed than storage capacity, you will soon end up with the Samsung T5 SSD. This external SSD is no bigger than a box of matches and is available in various sizes from 500 GB to 2 TB, but the best thing about this disk is the speed. This drive has a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) over USB-C and can write 20 GB of data in just 110 seconds. If it is a single file, then even in 58 seconds.

Best performance, runner-up: SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD (1TB)

This drive may be new than the Samsung, it is in second place, although some may find it an even better choice than the Samsung T5: the Sandisk Extreme Portable. It is a super fast USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) drive, but not as fast as the Samsung T5.

You could still opt for this disc instead of the Samsung T5 because it is more comfortable to hold with its rubber grip. It comes with a handy combo cable with which you can connect it to the old-fashioned square USB Type A port as well as USB-C ports.

With this, the Sandisk Extreme Portable displaces the Sandisk Extreme 900 drive, but that is only because the Extreme 900 is quite expensive. With around 700 euros for 1.92 TB, it is hard to justify compared to the Extreme Portable’s 521 euros for 2 TB.

Best external Thunderbolt 3 drive: Samsung X5

We have had to wait a long time, but there are finally enough Thunderbolt 3 drives and we are very impressed with Samsung’s new X5 drive. The disk is very fast thanks to the NVMe over Thunderbolt solution and easily achieves 2 GBps reading and writing speeds. That makes this drive the external drive for multimedia professionals. You need deep pockets for this drive and, of course, a computer with a Thunderbolt 3 connection, but it’s worth it.

Honorable mention: Toshiba Canvio Connect II 3 TB

If you are looking for a high capacity portable drive that comes in different sizes and colors, then the Toshiba Canvio Connect II 3TB will certainly appeal to you. Thanks to a USB 3 interface, the Canvio can transfer data quickly and easily. We saw 131 MB / s when reading large files and 135 MB / s when writing them in CrystalDiskMark’s sequential tests. This is pretty good for a 5400rpm hard drive.

For small 4 KB files, the performance is quite disappointing. The Connect II can only read half a megabyte and write 1.2 MB / s.

The disc is not surprisingly light with 230g and it is unlikely that it will fit in your pocket, with dimensions 109x78x19.5mm. But it is still extremely portable.

Toshiba provides quite a few software including NTI Backup Now EZ and Pogoplug PC. With the latter you can access the contents of the disk remotely, but only if the PC to which it is connected remains switched on. However, we recommend a NAS for this function.

You still get 10 GB of cloud storage with Pogoplug, so there are advantages. The drive is formatted with NTFS, but the handy Tuxera software allows you to connect the drive to the Mac without formatting it.

Runner-up honorable mention: Freecom mHDD Slim 1TB

Seagate is not the only one that shows off extra flat external hard drives. The Freecom mHDD Slim 1TB is a fairly expensive portable hard drive, but offers an attractive design and solid build quality.

We were impressed by the large number of usable software packages that came with the disc. Nero Backup Essentials is used for backing up files. Green button energy saver is used to reduce energy consumption for when the drive is not being used. Hard drive Eraser and Formatter ensures, as the name suggests, that you can quickly and easily empty and format your drive.

We found all software easy to use and they didn’t take up too much memory. The installation process is also simple, unlike other hard drive manufacturers that let you search for the software, Freecom has placed them all in the root directory of the hard drive.

The Freecom mHDD Slim has a very respectful sequential speed of 134.1MB / s reading and 132.8MB / s writing. This puts it in line with other portable hard drives on the market, such as the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim and Toshiba Canvio Connect II.

Like other portable drives on the market, the Freecom mHDD Slim has a low 4KB benchmark speed of 0.6 MB / s reading and 1.4 MB / s writing. This makes it slow for transferring smaller files. That is why the disc can best be used for writing large files.