When scouting out external drives, there is a lot to consider. Speed, durability, size, and so much more. We've found (and tested) the best HDDs and SSDs for your Mac or PC.
The best external drives for your Mac or PC
Seagate
Seagate Backup Plus Fast: a good external drive for Mac users?
As a MacBook Pro with Retina Display owner, disk space is at a premium. My MacBook features 256GB of SSD flash storage, which isn't exactly tiny in most use cases, but is downright microscopic when it comes to editing video and audio.
My video files are extra large due to the fact that I shoot in 4K the majority of the time. In fact, simply gathering the footage for this video review was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25GB, and that's not even an in-depth video like an iPad review or an Apple Watch review.
With this in mind, it became apparently clear that I was going to need an external storage solution. But I also needed something that was fast enough to adequately handle the throughput required by 4K video.
After lots of research, I ended up purchasing the Seagate Backup Plus Fast drive. It's a 4TB RAID 0 drive, so it's fairly fast. A couple of weeks into my purchase, I've accumulated several hours of hands-on experience with this drive. Does it live up to my expectations?
Seagate’s Backup Plus line offers various storage options in small package
Seagate is the world's largest provider of external hard drives by volume. Personally, I have around five or more scattered around my home, office and desk--too many to attempt to round up for an accurate count. They make great LAN, portable, wireless, and desktop class storage. Of course Seagate makes internal drives as well, but my experience with them is less versed. As I have witnessed, assumedly along with others familiar with the product line, Seagate is now producing a more creative approach to an otherwise simple storage device.
External storage, as a whole, used to be a simple drag-and-drop venture. Arguably, it was a simpler time. I really appreciate the ability to just plug in a drive and drop stuff to it. However, with the advent of social media, home networking, and some creative thinking, external storage is now something much different. Considering the Seagate Backup Plus line of products, which I first discovered at CES 2014, social sharing and saving are now integrated with the drives...
Seagate Central: a great storage solution for your Connected Home
Always moving forward, Seagate continues to reinvent current solutions. This time, Seagate took a hard look at their previous NAS drive, the GoFlex Home, and decided it left a few things to be desired. In an effort to impress, Seagate tore down the Home and seemingly started from scratch on the Central.
Overall, I am fairly impressed with Seagate's changes to the new hardware and corresponding software, online dashboard, and revamped media app. After speaking with the engineers behind the drive at CES, there appears to be a more prevalent focus on user experience with the new 2013 product line, of which I previously reviewed the Wireless Plus. Leading the charge for a user friendly product, this previously complicated network drive enables even novice users to go from box to operational in less than ten minutes...
Seagate dominates the mobile storage competition with 1TB Wireless Plus
After meeting with Seagate at CES, I was excited to get my paws on their new Wireless Plus, which is big brother to the recently retired and previously reviewed GoFlex Satellite. We all need our digital content on the go and, often, our iOS devices do not have enough room. I know my 16GB are carefully utilized on both iPad mini and iPhone. Toting around a Wi-Fi enabled 1TB Seagate drive prevents the need for choosing which media to bring along. Just drag and drop your media file to the Wireless Plus and walk out the door...