External Hard Drives

An external hard drive uses a spinning mechanical disk, which makes it slower than an SSD and considerably cheaper per terabyte. That trade decides where it belongs.

The right buy for: backups, archives, photo and video libraries, and anything written once and read occasionally. The cost difference at 2TB and above is substantial, and speed rarely matters when you are not working directly from the drive.

Where an SSD is worth more: a drive you edit from or run software on, and any drive carried daily. That second point matters — a mechanical drive has moving parts and does not survive being knocked while spinning, whereas an SSD has none. Rugged models such as the ADATA HD710 Pro add shock and water resistance for exactly that reason.

Power: 2.5in portable drives run from the USB cable alone. Larger 3.5in desktop drives need their own mains adapter.

One rule regardless of type: a single external drive is not a backup. Keep a second copy elsewhere.

The range covers ADATA, Seagate and Verbatim. See also NVMe SSDs.