If capacity is what you are after, then 5TB is the maximum you will get for a portable drive. 22TB is the largest single-drive capacity currently on the market (as of November 2022). If you want even higher capacities, you may want to consider Network Attached Storage ( NAS) which can scale all the way to hundreds of Terabytes.

Hard drives may get you more capacity for your dollar by far, but first you need to consider a major difference in external storage these days: the hard drive versus the SSD. Note that various vendors use different nomenclatures. WD confusingly has two categories - external drives and portable drives - but includes products in the latter category in the former one while archrival Seagate categorizes them as desktop drives and portable drives. You will note that they removed the word "hard" and that's for a good reason: increasingly portable drives are based on flash components and in a near future - given the rapid drop in hardware pricing - we wouldn't be surprised to see multiple SSDs combined in a "desktop drive" How to choose the best external hard drive for you You can trust LaCie to bring a little style to storage, and its latest Mobile Drive is another distinctive effort, with an angular, all-aluminium design enhanced by diamond-cut edges and a choice of space grey and moon silver MacBook-matching finishes. But while the looks are important, they’re not all this drive has to rely on. The drive comes preloaded with Buffalo's "ModeChanger" utility for Windows and Mac that switches it from Open to Secure and vice-versa. Mode switching takes less than a minute and the drive must be reformatted after that.

Desktop hard drives are cheaper per Terabyte, offer capacities above 20TB, usually perform better but they are much larger and require an external power supply unit. Also know that you can find external drives that do way more than just store your data. Some include SD card readers to offload footage from a camera or drone in the field, while a few specialized models have built-in Wi-Fi and can double as a little media server, able to connect to more than one device at a time. Given that even our fastest USB Type-C drive – the Kingston XS2000 – could only reach 2GB/sec over USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, that’s extremely impressive. From editing 4K, or even 8K, video to gaming, there’s nothing that this drive can’t handle. If you deal with any sensible information leaving it in an unencrypted drive is risky. While encryption can be done in software with a high degree of fine-tuning, nothing beats a purely hardware-based solution that frees you from the software-configuration complexities.

What sets this drive apart aside from the gaming aesthetics is its total compatibility. Since it comes pre-formatted with the ExFAT file system in addition to being compatible with PCs and Macs it's plug-and-play compatible with the Sony PlayStation 4, PS5 and the Microsoft Xbox One. Data recording frequency? (your charts are smooth lines, without any points to indicate the datum points). Do you do it 1 or two datum points per second, or is it by data volume, as in 1 datum per GB or so? Solid-state drives (SSDs) have fewer moving parts than traditional hard drives, and they offer the speediest access to your data. Unlike a conventional disk-based hard drive, which stores data on a spinning platter or platters accessed by a moving magnetic head, an SSD uses a collection of flash cells—similar to the ones that make up a computer's RAM—to save data. In a nutshell, it is a storage device that contains an internal hard drive. The fact that there's two types of hard drives - 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch - means that there are also two types of external hard drives: larger desktop hard drives and smaller portable hard drives.This means that much of the speed will be wasted on the Xbox Series S/X and PS5 consoles, where the P50 could be used to store games you aren’t playing or run last-generation titles. On a fast PC with the right connection, though, it’s an absolute beast. It’s also happy working in the most demanding content creation apps, making it one powerful and versatile external drive. Not only is the Fantom DrivesGF3B10000UP one of the faster 10TB external hard drives on the market, but it’s also currently on a 7% discount. This hard drive is entirely compatible with Xbox One, Macintosh, and PC. Providing 7200 RPM, it’s impressively fast which saves you precious time. It’s 2.2 pounds and only 7.75 inches tall, 4.75 inches wide, and 1.4 inches deep. We primarily recommend it for anyone looking for a faster than normal 10TB external hard drive!