Max Freeman-Mills
The best external hard drives for Mac can be hugely useful when you've filled up the capacity of your macOS machine's internal SSD. These plug-in external drives can give you gigabytes of additional storage in an instant, so you'll have much more room for photos, videos, music, podcasts and anything else you want to store in digital form.
Two types of technology are covered in our best Mac external drive list: HDD (Hard Disk Drive) devices use the traditional, slower, mechanical technology, so these can't compete on transfer speeds but do give you lots of capacity for not much money; SSD (Solid State Drive), meanwhile, provides faster storage technology with no moving parts for those who want the speed.
As we note in T3's best SSDs buying guide, these drives offer way faster speeds than conventional HDDs, as found in many of the best external hard drives. Insane speed isn't everything though: when it comes to extended storage, capacity is often the most important thing, so it's very much about finding the product that works best for you.
Don't panic though: our buying guide will tell you everything you need to know in plain language. These are quite simply the very best external hard drives for Macs that money can buy, and we'll talk you through the advantages (and occasional disadvantages) of each one.
Best external hard drives for Mac 2025
Best rugged SSD
External hard drives don't have to be complicated at all, as the Seagate Ultra Touch HDD proves. We've featured the cheaper, slower HDD version, but if you want to pay extra then a faster SSD model is available as well. For most people, HDDs still offer the best value for money, even if you're going to have to wait a few extra seconds when you're copying large files over.
A word, too, on the design of these drives, because they're some of the most stylish that we've come across. Whether you pick the white or the black finish, the woven fabric adds a touch of elegance to your Mac setup.
Best premium SSD
The name says just about everything you need to know about this external hard drive for Mac: it has super-fast SSD technology (with read speeds of up to 1,050MB/s), it's made by Lacie, and it's portable, so you can take it anywhere you like without a separate power brick. It's also pretty stylish in our opinion.
With the SSD technology installed here and the USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface (a USB-C cable is included in the box), you can, for example, transfer around an hour of high-resolution video footage in under a minute. It's ideal if you're regularly shifting large amounts of data around on your computer(s).
Best rugged SSD
There's so much to like about the SanDisk Professional G-Drive SSD, but when it comes to the best external hard drives for Mac, you're likely to choose this one if you need something you can take anywhere. Thanks to the NVMe technology that's on board, you can expect transfer speeds of up to 1,050MB/s with this particular drive.
SanDisk says the unit is good for IP67 water and dust resistance, drops of up to 3 metres, and crushes under weights of up to 900 kilograms or 2,000 pounds – and there aren't really a lot of hard drives you can say that about. You can buy the drive in capacities ranging from 500MB to 4TB.
Best for capacity
The WD My Cloud Home Duo is certainly bulky, and it needs a separate power supply, but it's undoubtedly one of the best external hard drives for Mac in terms of overall storage capacity: depending on the disks you get installed inside the unit (and there are two bays), you can configure this to have up to 20TB of room.
We're impressed by just how many configurations you can get this drive in – the capacities start at 4TB, so you really can choose a storage and price point to suit your needs and your budget, while getting all the usual Western Digital quality.
Best portability
If you want an external hard drive that powers itself solely from the USB port it's plugged into, then the WD Elements SE SSD is worth a look: it's fast, stylish, and affordable, and it comes in capacities of up to 2TB as well. Western Digital has made this too tough, with drop resistance up to 2 metres (over 6 feet) and a tough plastic shell.
While it's not the absolute fastest external hard drive for Mac you're going to come across, your files will still speed along as you transfer them to and from the drive, thanks to the SSD (solid-state drive) technology in play here.
Best speeds
For those looking to pick up one of the fastest SSDs on the market without paying over the odds, the Samsung T7 has to be on your shortlist: this incredibly compact, remarkably fast external drive is a showcase for SSD technology, and it's likely to become your constant external storage companion if you invest in it.
Measuring just 85 x 57 x 8mm and weighing in at just 58g, this is a very small drive, protected against drops of up to 2 metres. It's the speeds that are the star of the show here though, with read speeds of up to 1,050MB/s and the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2 technology for connecting the device to your Mac.
What you should know before buying an external drive for your Mac
It's 2025, which means that solid-state drives (SSDs for short) are hardly new, but it's still well worth us pointing out that they're a huge variable when you shop for a new hard drive. In fact, they're not technically hard drives, but we're going to ignore that for the sake of clarity.
SSDs are faster and smaller than traditional disc-based hard drives by quite a big margin but, for a long time, they were quite a lot more expensive, too. That's actually still the case, but their prices have come down heavily in recent years, making them affordable if you're happy to settle for lower capacities.
It's still very much the case that if you want the most terabytes of storage that you can possibly get, an old-school HDD will be the best value. However, it'll be much slower to transfer files, so you'll have to weigh up what's more important to you. SSDs are also significantly more portable, thanks to being way smaller, which counts for something.
If you do decide to go with an SSD, it's easy to get bogged down comparing speeds between different drives. It's true that you can spend more to get boosted transfer speeds on the latest and greatest, but trust us that most reputable brands like Samsung or LaCie can be relied upon to provide speeds that will keep you happy as you store files.
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