Gallery: Buying Guide: External Hard Drives
01buying-advice-5
Of all your computer's accessories, an external storage drive is the most important. Speakers and LCD screens can be replaced. But data? Not so much. Keeping your bits safe, secure and recoverable is absolutely critical. The Basics __Really? Even in The Age of The Cloud?__ While cloud-based backups are inexpensive (as little as $5 or $10 a month) and make mobile computing easier, it's still a very good idea to have a local drive for dedicated storage. You can restore a toasted computer from a local drive more quickly and with less hassle. But also consider this: You don't just use storage drives for backup. You use them to hold movies, music, working files, and other things that just make more sense to keep within reach. It's a pain to stream a movie you've stashed in the cloud when you could just load it from a USB drive sitting next to your computer. __Connection Types__ USB is the most common interface for storage drives. Almost everything out there has a USB 2.0 port that can transfer data at 480Mbps, which is fast enough to not cause excessive pain. The newer USB 3.0 standard is roughly eight to 10 times faster than USB 2.0, but it isn't as widespread. USB is a backward-compatible standard, so USB 3.0 drives will work with computers that only have USB 2.0. FireWire is fading into obscurity, so stay away from FireWire drives. Thunderbolt is the most advanced option. The new standard developed by Intel first showed up on Apple computers, but it isn't widely adopted yet. There are very few peripherals utilizing Thunderbolt, and what's out there is expensive. The cables are also rare and costly ($50 each). But you can read from or write to a Thunderbolt drive at a very fast 10Gbps, which makes the extra dollars worth it. __Put the Network to Work__ The proliferation of network-connected tablets, consoles and TVs means that a good hard drive should be able to throw media files to more places than just your PC's desktop. Network Attached Storage drives (NASes) can dish out files to any device on your network -- these are a good choice if you want one, massive central storage device to stay in one place and hold all your movies and other media, no matter how many computers you have. There are also set-top boxes that double as NASes, so you can store terabytes of data and stream web videos or watch Netflix movies all using one box that connects to your TV. Another option is a Wi-Fi drive, a new class of ultra-portable hard drive with a battery and a Wi-Fi radio inside. These devices link up to your laptop or tablet via an ad hoc network connection. Buying Advice Basic USB hard drives are cheap, and they're the best choice for local backups. If you need portability, choose a USB drive that doesn't require its own power supply. If you need network connectivity for passing movies around the house, get something with a network port and a USB port. If you're using the storage mostly for videos, a set-top box with a big drive, some embedded streaming software and an HDMI port will only make your life easier. Which brand to buy? Everyone has a horror story about a drive from Company X or Company Y going south on them, along with a warning to steer clear of everything with a particular brand name on it. But the truth is all drives fail at some point, no matter who makes them. Your primary concerns should be the size of the actual drive and the warranty period. 500GB and 1TB drives have been around for a long time and are well proven. 2TB drives are newer but are now considered by most consumer watchdogs to be just as reliable as 1TB drives. Stay away from 3TB drives for the time being until they've been proven in the field. A 2-year warranty is standard for most hard drives, but 3-year warranties are quickly becoming more common.
02best-portable-drive
Western Digital My Passport --------------------------- These tiny [My Passport drives](http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=440) from Western Digital earn our recommendation for a few reasons. They're extremely small and portable, they're capable of both USB 2.0 and 3.0 speeds, and priced between $90 and $150, they're quite affordable. Best Portable My Passport Western Digital $90-$160 [wdc.com](http://www.wdc.com/) Sure, you can get a 2TB drive from WD, Hitachi or Seagate for close to the same amount of money as a 1TB My Passport drive, but the other options are much larger and require external power supplies. If you want the ultimate in grab-and-go mobility, these little bricks are a great choice. The [My Passport Essential SE](http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=430) works on both Macs and Windows PC, and comes with a 2-year warranty. The drive is USB-powered (there are no external power cables) and comes in a few different colors. Western Digital also offers some add-on software for data encryption, and a backup suite with a few different backup options. 750GB models are about $90, and 1TB models are about $140. The Mac-ready version, the [My Passport for Mac](http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=460), has many of the same features as the Essential SE model, but with an all-metal case that matches the current Mac notebooks and desktops. You pay a little more for the fancier metal enclosure: they run $90 for 500GB, $115 for 750GB and $160 for 1TB.
03best-cheap-drive
Hitachi Touro Desk Pro ---------------------- Best Cheap Hard Drive Touro Desk Pro Hitachi $100 for 1TB $125 for 2TB $160 for 3TB [touropro.com](http://www.touropro.com/) If low cost is your primary concern, you'd be hard pressed to find a better drive for the money than Hitachi's [Touro Desk Pro](http://www.touropro.com/product/touro-desk-pro/). The sleek, all-black enclosure looks great on your desktop, but that's where it will most likely stay since you'll need to keep it plugged into the DC power supply. It's fast -- read and write to the 7,200-rpm drive using USB 3.0 if you have it, or USB 2.0 if you don't -- and the 2TB version is about $125, the same amount of money you'd lay out for a more portable drive with half the capacity. Each drive comes with a 2-year warranty and some freemium cloud backup software. Also, the design is stackable, so if you double up, two drives will nestle together nicely.
04fastest-speeds
LaCie Thunderbolt ----------------- Any product showcasing a new and burgeoning technology has two obligations to fulfill: It must be superior on its own merits, and it must uphold the potential of new and better gadgets down the line. Best for Pure Speed Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD LaCie $900 for 240GB [LaCie.com](http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10549) These are the unfortunate burdens carried by LaCie's [Little Big Disk 240GB Thunderbolt series SSD](http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10549), the first third-party, solid-state drive equipped with a new Thunderbolt transfer port. It's one of the first devices to showcase the new high-speed connection standard, now shipping on MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, Mac Minis and iMacs. Thunderbolt is capable of transfer speeds up to 10 gigabits per second, 20 times better than USB 2.0 and twice as potent as USB 3.0. Transferring a 5GB collection of MP3s using USB 2.0 took 3 minutes, 52 seconds. The Little Big Disk SSD did the same work in 34 seconds flat. An entire 63GB iTunes library copied in 5 minutes, 30 seconds. That said, the SSD version is $900 for 240GB of storage -- too expensive no matter how you slice it. We recommend the hard disk versions of the same product, which marry Thunderbolt transfer speeds to 1TB and 2TB 7,200-rpm drives. The 1TB costs $450 and the 2TB costs about $550. [Read Our Full Review](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/reviews/2011/11/lacie-ssd/).
05best-wi-fi-drive
Seagate GoFlex Satellite ------------------------ This drive is made to serve your mobile fix. Seagate's [GoFlex Satellite](http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/external-hard-drive/goflex-satellite) is a 500GB drive with a Wi-Fi radio inside. Connect to it wirelessly wherever you are and enjoy the movies, shows or music stored within. Best Wi-Fi Drive GoFlex Satellite Seagate $200 for 500GB [Seagate.com](http://www.seagate.com/) You hook it up to your computer using USB (it acts just like a standard hard drive) then fill it up with media files and charge the lithium-ion battery inside. Then, you pull the USB assembly off the back and carry the drive around. When you want to watch a movie or listen to some music, you plop the drive on the table in front of you and turn it on. Then, whip out your tablet or phone and switch your connection from your regular Wi-Fi network to the ad hoc network created by the drive. To access your files, you can use Seagate's free app for iOS, which has a nice embedded player for watching the videos and playing the songs stored on the drive. Android users can use the web browser. The battery lasted about 4 or 5 hours in our testing, and there's a car charger in the box for keeping it alive during road trips. The Seagate player app was mostly painless to set up and use on an iPad. [Read Our Full Review](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/reviews/2011/11/seagate-satellite/).
06the-set-top-box
Western Digital Live Hub ------------------------ Set Top Box TV Live Hub Western Digital $200 for 1TB [Seagate.com](http://www.seagate.com/) If you're going to buy a network-attached storage device for holding movies and music, why not get one that hooks up to your A/V system as well? Western Digital's TV Live Hub is a set-top box (similar to Roku or Apple TV) that plays Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube and streaming video from all around the web. It has a 1TB drive inside it, and it plays all the videos stored on your networked PCs, as well. Setting it up is pretty easy -- you just hook it up with an HDMI cable (oddly, not included) and go through the steps of connecting to your network and authenticating with all the various streaming services you subscribe to. Connecting to your PCs to share files is a little more tricky, as it involves possibly futzing around with your router and your computers' sharing settings. Once on the network, ours played every video format we threw at it -- AVIs, MKVs, MP4s, VOBs, and WMVs -- and we failed to find a subtitle format it couldn't handle. [Read Our Full Review](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/reviews/2011/11/wd-tv-live/).
07the-mac-companion
Iomega Mac Companion -------------------- For iMac Owners Mac Companion Iomega $230 for 2TB $350 for 3TB [go.Iomega.com](http://go.iomega.com/) If computer hardware could spoon, this is what it would look like. Iomega's [Mac Companion](http://go.iomega.com/en-us/products/external-hard-drive-desktop/mac-companion/mac-companion/?partner=4760) hard drive has a case shaped exactly like the base of the iMac and Apple's latest displays. It nestles there right under the screen's "chin," conforming perfectly to the curves of the base, but leaving enough room for the screen to comfortably swing forward and aft on its hinge. The drive connects either via USB 2.0 or via FireWire. You get faster transfer speeds with the FireWire 800 connection, but using the USB cable instead yields some nice extras. The drive also acts as a USB hub, so even though you're taking up a USB port on the back of your computer, you get two more ports on the back of the drive. Furthermore, there's an additional 2.1 amp "sync and charge" port on the side of the drive where you can plug in an iPhone or an iPad. I had some difficulty getting my iPad to sync properly when plugged into the "sync and charge" port, though the extra port had no problems charging my tablet. [Read Our Full Review](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/reviews/2011/11/iomega-mac-companion/).
08the-diy-nas
CiragoLink+ ----------- The DIY NAS NUS2000 Cirago $80 [Cirgao.com](http://cirago.com/) This [little box from Cirago](http://cirago.com/wordpress/products/networking/ciragolink/) isn't a hard drive. It's a smart USB hub that attaches to your home network -- plug any USB drive into it, and that drive becomes network-accessible. It effectively turns as many as four USB drives into NAS drives. Each port can handle a 2TB drive, giving you up to 8TB of networked storage. Settings are accessed through a browser-based control panel, and although the user experience is a touch hairy, more tech-savvy users shouldn't have problems getting it set up. It's not a Wi-Fi device, so it will need to sit relatively close to your router (an ethernet cable is included). Via the browser, you can administer user accounts so certain people can only access certain drives, and you can set up remote access for your users. There's a print server, an iTunes server, and even a built-in BitTorrent client that can write directly to the attached drives. For only $80, this thing's a bargain, especially if you have a few hard drives lying around that you want to make available to every PC on your network.
