what is the best portable hard drive for mac

Its also something of a misnomer, as the actual drive mechanism inside the tough shell is usually a normal, off-the-shelf storage component, just like youd find in any laptop or desktop.

Extreme ruggedness against dust, water, drops, crush pressure.

Small, light, and even mailable, it earns the right to add extremely in front of fast and rugged.

Read Review ADATA HD710M Pro External Hard Drive Pros: Durable in drop tests.

Bottom Line: Love or hate its camouflage look, the ADATA HD710M Pro external rugged hard drive provides on-par performance and fine durability at a competitive price.

No backup utilities or photovideo subscription deals included.

Bottom Line: The rough-and-tumble Armor ATD, G-Technologys latest ruggedized hard drive, performs on point and packs a competitive-enough cost per gigabyte to brawl and fall with competitors.

Read Review ioSafe Rugged Portable SSD (500GB) Pros: Speedy performance.

No USB-C. Bottom Line: If you and your files need to venture into the unknown, the ioSafe Rugged Portable SSD might be the trusty, nearly indestructible companion youre looking for.

But for the average user, there are plenty of durable, reasonably priced external drives with higher capacity.

LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle Pros: Flat, easily mailable chassis.

Can set to RAID 0 for higher speed and capacity, or to RAID 1 for drive mirroring.

High price per gigabyte, due largely to ruggedization and RAID design.

Its ideal for anyone who works in the field and produces oodles of data.

Read Review Samsung Portable SSD X5 Pros: Extremely fast data transfer speeds, thanks to Thunderbolt 3 and PCIe NVMe interfaces.

Bottom Line: The sleek, expensive Samsung Portable SSD X5 offers the fastest single-drive external storage money can buy, but its suited mainly to well-heeled content-creation pros using late-model Macs.

Bottom Line: The SanDisk Extreme 900 Portable SSD hits a rare sweet spot for solid-state drives: Its durable, versatile, speedy, and reasonably priced for its capacity.

SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD Pros: IP55-rated for shock-, dust-, and water-resistance.

Read Review CalDigit Tuff Nano Pros: Slim and sleek, with an anodized aluminum case and rubber bumpers.

USB-A and USB-C cables included, as well as a convenient plastic case.

Looks like youre going to need a hard drive designed to withstand the rigors of the real world.

Now, any ordinary external hard drive has some degree of toughness.

Some rugged drives are built to withstand forces that would kill any bare-naked internal drive: strong impacts, water immersion, even fire.

Drives designed for more casual abuse are often marketed as ruggedized, but thats an inexact term.

What Is The Best Portable Hard Drive For Mac