Best portable outdoor storage units (2021): SSDs, hard drives, rugged

If you run with no storage space on your laptop, you have to back up your data or save that delay in the videos you will edit one day (I swear), an external hard drive can fix your problem. The problem is, there are hundreds of disc options ranging from dirt cheap to crazy crazy – which one is right for your needs? We’ve tested dozens of different use cases to find the best portable hard drives for your workflow.

Be sure to check out our other guides, among others How to backup and move your photos between services, How to back up your digital life, and How to backup your iPhone.

Special offer for Gear readers: get it One year subscription to WIRED for $ 5 ($ 25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (optional). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

If you buy something using links in our stories, we can earn a commission. This helps to protect our journalism. Learn more.

Best for backups

I know this guide is appropriate portable hard drives, which is not portable, but should be taken with me. To make backups, what we recommend, portability is not your top priority. Typically, your backup software will run overnight, so speed is also not a huge factor. That’s why this first album I recommend is Western Digital Elements.

I’ve been making some changes to my WD Elements desktop hard drive for over a decade now to make incremental backups of my data. They are large and require external power, but these are the cheapest and most reliable units I have used. Check prices on larger discs as well; sometimes you can get 6 or 8 terabyte units to not have much more.

Other high backup units:

• Seagate Expansion Desktop HD 4 TB ($ 95): Seagate is another trusted record creator. It never hurts to have more backups, and if you want more than one backup, use units of different brands, both of which will reduce your chances of failing at the same time.
• Western Digital Elements 4 TB Portable Hard Drive ($ 105): If you don’t mind spending a little more, you can get the same size in a more portable form factor that doesn’t require external energy. The 4-terabyte model is usually on sale for less than $ 100.

The best portable unit

These crucial drives are my favorite portable drives. They are reasonably priced (for a portable SSD) and are very fast. The only drive I tested with faster reading speeds was the Samsung T7 (see below), and it costs $ 90 more. These are also lightweight, which makes them ideal for working outside the home. I use one to store video clips, and it’s fast enough to edit directly from the disc. The only downside is the plastic construction. Don’t expect it to have the survival of many drops.

Best for speed

If money is no object, and you only care about speed, these Samsung laptops outperform everything else tested. They are lightweight, but have metal enclosures that make them reasonably indestructible. The catch is the price. The cost per gigabyte is the highest in this guide. If you want a laptop and quickly, you will have to pay.

Another quick alternative: Seagate-rena One Touch SSD ($ 300 for 2 TB) in the second speed test we came out very close behind the Samsung T7, and it’s a bit cheaper.

The best records to go anywhere

If you need a disc capable of coping with life backpack or camera bag, soak up or handle the fall on hard surfaces, OWC units are your best choice. It’s hard to pick a winner here because there are so many solid options, but OWC’s Elektron records outperform others in benchmark tests. I also like that you can swap out the aluminum case drive (it’s easy to unlock), which means you can pick up a faster naked SSD two years from now and throw it in Elektron.

Another devastating record: I really like Sabrentena Rocket Nano SSD ($ 159 TB for 1). It’s slightly faster than the top OWC, but it has two drawbacks. The first is that it can be really hot. If you are trying to work on your lap, it can be completely uncomfortable. The other problem is that sometimes it’s too slow to get to know my computers. I didn’t find it in this model; sometimes it appeared immediately, other times it took a couple of minutes. If these things don’t bother you, this record is small, cheaper, and has a rubber-covered cover.

The best filling units

Devices for any of the above are a solid solution for people who need to back up in the field, such as photographers and videographers. But if you want an extra level of comfort, this LaCie covered drive has long been a passenger favorite. LaCie makes the SSD version and the traditional spinning drive version. If speed isn’t an issue, as is the case with nighttime backups, then so be it cheaper spinning disc it makes more sense. If you’re backing up in the middle of a quick photo shoot or similar situation, the SSD version is what you want.

Tips for buying a hard drive

Choosing the right hard drive is about balancing three things: speed, size, and price. If you’re backing up at night, you probably don’t care about speed and size. Go find the cheapest record you can find, up to a point. Units don’t last forever, but some last longer than others. I recommend sticking to well-known brands like Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba and the rest that appear here. This is based in part on experience and in part on Backblaze’s disk failure data. has been publishing for years. Backblaze stacks up a lot of hard drives that back up customer data and is worth reading its report. It’s easy to carry: paste it with names you know.

If speed is more expensive, you want to study solid state units. SSDs only have a speed advantage, they don’t even have moving parts, which means they will withstand life and falls in the road bag life better than road discs. The disadvantage is that they can wear out faster. Each write operation degrades the individual NAND cells that make up the drive to an SSD — that is, when you store something — which is used slightly faster than a rotating disk. It depends on how fast you use it. That said, I have several SSDs that are over 5 years old and I have used them to make daily backups all the time. None of them have had any problems.

When would you like the SSD to be rotating on the disk? The answer is almost always — if you pay. But especially for any drive you’re working on regularly: the main boot drive, the external drive you use to edit documents, and even backups if you need it to happen quickly.

More great KABEKO stories