Seagate Desktop, 8 TB, External Hard Drive HDD – USB 3.0 for PC Laptop and Mac and Two-year Rescue Services (STGY8000400), Black

Product Information

The USB standard a drive relies upon to connect to your devices will determine a number of things about its potential performance, including maximum transfer rate. Some in the storage industry refer to these (as well as smaller-capacity externals as a whole) as DAS—for "direct attached storage"—to distinguish them from NAS, or network attached storage, many of which are also multi-bay devices that can take two or more drives that you supply.

Anti shock, anti shockHigh-strength aluminum alloy shell, due to the rapid thermal conductivity of aluminum alloy, the surface of the product has higher body temperature during use.Only reviews that feature the label "Verified Review" have been checked to ensure that the author actually used or purchased the product. I currently focus my testing efforts on 3D printers, pro and productivity displays, and drives and SSDs of all sorts.

Still, while external SSDs are cheaper than they were a few years ago (see the best we've tested at the preceding link), they're far from a complete replacement for spinning drives. Some require you to sacrifice raw capacity for data redundancy, so you'll want to pay attention to the nuances of each level. Being online means that sharing content is easy, too, but on the flip side, you can create separate private spaces on the drive for each person in your household.How an external drive connects to your PC or Mac is second only to the type of storage mechanism it uses in determining how fast you'll be able to access data. Its combination of solid performance, hardware encryption, and useful utilities makes the 5TB WD My Passport a strong contender for everyday backup of sensitive data or storing a massive collection of videos, photos, and documents.