best external hard drive compatible with mac and pc

Beyond that, you get the choice of eye-watering capacities: up to a whopping 20TB. And while the camouflage look might not be for everyone, when it comes to ruggedness, you won't find finer.ĭon't want to mess about reformatting a hard drive to use with your Mac? This SanDisk drive comes Mac-ready and you can format it to work with any PC, too. It's nice and fast too, offering transfer speeds of up to 5GBps, and its capacity goes up to 5TB. So if big vibrations are detected during data transfer, a red LED lights up to warn you and the device automatically activates internal protection mechanisms to safeguard your data. It also comes with a waterproof cover and is equipped with shock sensors.

Rated to IP68 standards, it provides protection against dust and sand, and is waterproof to the point where it can be submerged at a two-metre depth for up to 60 minutes. With three layers of anti-shock technology, it can withstand drops of up to 1.5m in height. If that's the case, we'd recommend the ADATA HD710 Pro. If you're taking your hard drive outdoors – as you might do on a photography shoot, for instance – you'll want something rugged enough to survive the trip, especially if the weather is looking hostile. And we've seen some great discounts on the Samsung T7, so get in there if you want to save big on one of the best SSDs around. The T5 is still widely available, but the T7 is twice as fast, with read/write speeds up to 1,050MB/s and 1,000MB/s. Like the earlier drives in the range, the T7 is compact, lightweight and robust, with a shock-resistant aluminium housing that means it can withstand drops of up to two metres.

We've been impressed with this range of Samsung SSDs ever since our Samsung T3 review years ago. You can install applications onto it, and you could even run an entire alternative operating system off it at full speed if you wanted to. You can load, edit and save 4K video directly on the T7, something that can be painfully slow with a USB hard disk. You can also use password protection if you prefer. The built-in fingerprint scanner is backed up with AES 265-bit encryption, and once you set that up, nobody except you will be able to access your files. The Samsung T7 Touch is a great value option, with the added bonus of fingerprint security (this is the difference from the standard Samsung T7). They're more expensive, but a lot faster. That's when an SSD is the smart option over an external hard drive. Speed can be of the essence if you have gigabytes of big image or video files and don't want to be stuck watching the progress bar crawl along at a glacial pace.

Best external hard drive compatible with mac and pc