best external hard drive macbook affordable

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The physical size of the drive depends on the amount of storage you choose. The My Passport starts at just $79.99/£49.99 for 1TB storage, going up to $189/£119.99 for 5TB, so it’s a really affordable backup option if you’re on a tight budget.

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Western Digital’s My Passport drive provides plenty of portable storage at a competitive price. Even so, that performance will be fine for routine backups, and the encryption option will be really useful if you want to make sure that your private data stays private even if the drive is lost or stolen. It recorded write and read speeds of 125MBps and 130MBps respectively in our tests, and took 110 seconds to back up a 5GB batch of iTunes music files.

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Performance is respectable enough, although the Ultra Plus won’t win any awards for high-speed backups. The ToolKit app also handles the encryption process for the Ultra Touch, although we found Seagate’s manual–or lack thereof–to be rather unhelpful, leaving us to look around for FAQs and information about this encryption and other features on the company’s website. The drive can be used for automatic Time Machine backups on your Mac, but you can also use the mirror option in the ToolKit app to automatically back up individual folders so that they’re always right up-to-date (and don’t have to wait for Time Machine’s hourly backups). The Ultra Touch includes the same ToolKit app that is used with the LaCie Mobile Drive.

Seagate includes a standard USB 3.0 port on the back of the drive, and a USB 3.0 cable that will work with any Mac or PC, and Seagate also includes a USB-C adapter. It’s available in either black or white and finished off with a smart woven fabric that makes a nice change from the dull monochrome colors of most hard drives. The Ultra Touch measures 4.5×3.1×0.5 inches (115x78x12 millimeters) and weighs 0.3 pounds (151 grams), so you can easily slip it into a jacket pocket or a bag when you’re traveling. It has a stylish design that makes it a good companion for your MacBook, and also offers encryption to provide extra security for your important files and data. The Seagate Ultra Touch is available with either 1TB or 2TB storage. Backing up a 5GB batch of iTunes songs took exactly one minute. The Mobile Drive provides good performance, with write and read speeds both averaging out at 132MBps in our tests (almost identical to the Rugged Secure drives).

Best external hard drive macbook affordable manual#

Our only complaint here is that LaCie’s skimpy manual doesn’t provide much information about the ToolKit app, or the various formatting options for the drive, simply leaving you to wade through a bunch of FAQ files on its website. This ensures that your backups are always up to date with the most recent versions of your files–Time Machine has a one-hour gap between backups. Any folder that is mirrored is automatically backed up and updated as soon as you make any changes to any file within that folder. This is a good option if you use your Mac at work, and have individual projects organized in their own folders.

Best external hard drive macbook affordable for mac#

The drives can be used with Time Machine for Mac backups, but LaCie offers a ToolKit app that allows you to ‘mirror’ individual folders.

The Mobile Drive has a single USB-C port on the back, but LaCie includes cables for both USB-C and the older USB 3.0, so you can use the drive with any Mac or PC.

Drives that are 2TB or less are physically smaller, measuring 4.8×3.5×0.4 inches (121.6×87.8×10 millimeters and weigh a more modest 0.5 pounds (200 grams). The Mobile Drives that are 4TB or more are 4.9×3.6×0.8 inches (124×91.2×20 millimeters) and weigh 0.9 pounds (400 grams) and they could give someone a serious concussion if you whacked them over the head with it. The “diamond cut” design simply refers to the exaggerated angular edges and corners looks aside, the aluminum casing feels really sturdy. They’re available in two colors: Moon Silver and Space Gray that is intended to match the Mac. Rather than the neon-orange rubber bumper of its Rugged drives, the new Mobile Drives are wrapped in smart aluminum.

LaCie’s range of Mobile Drives provide a much wider range of options, as well as a “diamond cut” design.