There are a few things to keep in mind when you’re in the market for a new portable hard drive. For starters, you’ll want to consider the type of hard drive you want.
HHD vs. SSD: There are two main types: HHDs, or hard disk drives, and SSDs, or solid state drives. The difference is pretty important. HHDs store information on a spinning disk and that disk can be a source of hard drive failure. SSDs, on the other hand, have no moving parts and are thus more reliable as portable hard drives. The trade off is that SSDs are a lot more expensive.
Storage amount: You’ll also want to consider how much storage you need. If you’re a videographer or photographer, chances are you could easily fill up a hard drive quickly, so you’ll want a higher-capacity drive. If on the other hand, you’re simply transferring Microsoft Word documents to and from work, then you won’t need as much storage and could save a few bucks by getting a lower storage drive.
Connection: Next up, you’ll want to think about the kind of connection you want your hard drive to connect through. The vast majority of external hard drives connect to a computer through USB, and nowadays it’s through USB 3.0, but there are still some USB 2.0-capable hard drives. There are also plenty of hard drives that connect though Firewire, and some that even connect through Thunderbolt.
Operating system: Last but not least is operating system-compatibility. Now, most hard drives can be formatted to work with both macOS and Windows, and you’ll be able to set that up when you first get the hard drive. Some, however, are pre-formatted, so you don’t have to worry about formatting.
Make two copies in different locations: A quick note about hard drives: none of these are 100% reliable. You should always have two copies of your data in different locations. Hard drive failures happen to even the most reliable of drives, and you don’t want to be stuck losing valuable data.