1. Hard Drive Reader Software
2. Mac Hard Drive Reader For Windows
3. Hard Drive Recovery Reader
4. Mac Reader For Windows 10
5. Usb Hard Drive Reader Cable
6. External Hard Drive Mac Windows
7. Mac Hard Drive Reader Free Download

Earlier this year, I wrote several guides to boost the speeds of older Macs by swapping their internal hard drives for super-fast solid state drives (SSDs). As readers have confirmed, their older iMacs, MacBooks, and Mac Pros have seen dramatic improvements with new SSDs. But some people were left with a question: what should I do with my Mac’s old hard drive? Throw it away?

Both Windows 8 and Mac OS X allow you to adjust the size of the format partitions on external hard drives. Set the number to the maximum to use the entire drive in a single partition.

A great answer: put it in an external hard drive enclosure and keep using it! My latest How-To shows you how easy it is to reclaim your Mac’s old drive by installing it in a nice USB enclosure such as Akitio’s SK-3501U3 (shown here), which I chose because of its Mac-matching design, reasonable sub-$40 price, and compatibility. External enclosures are also ideal options if you want to choose a high-quality hard drive mechanism for yourself, rather than taking a risk on whatever might be hidden inside a fully-assembled external drive. I’ll explain that, and much more, below…

Photo credit Eric Gaba, Wikimedia Commons user Sting

A Quick Primer On Internal Hard Drives

The vast majority of Macs in homes have mechanical hard drives (rather than chip-based SSDs) inside. Without a computer or another enclosure surrounding them, these hard drives are called “internal hard drives.” They’re small metal boxes akin to old-fashioned record players, with one or more spinning disks (“platters”) that get accessed by a “read/write head” (shown above). Hard drives aren’t all created equal, and they aren’t built to last forever: good drives typically last for around three years of very active use, and great ones for five years. Light use extends their lives.

With over 27,000 drives on hand, Backblaze last year published the most comprehensive independent test results I’ve seen for consumer-grade hard drives. Comparing Seagate, Hitachi GST, and Western Digital disks of various capacities, Backblaze found that Hitachi GST’s drives had the lowest failure rate at any capacity, followed closely by Western Digital, with Seagate ranking a very distant third. “If the price were right,” Backblaze said, “we would be buying nothing but Hitachi drives.”

But nothing’s set in stone: Western Digital now owns Hitachi GST, and Seagate has been working to improve the reliability of its drives. This year, Backblaze updated its findings with new failure statistics, noting that it now has over 41,000 drives in use. It found that Seagate’s latest 4TB drives are much better than ones it previously tested — still about twice as failure-prone than Hitachi GST drives, but not 20 times worse (like Seagate’s 3TB drives). Western Digital and Hitachi GST drives otherwise remained excellent.

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In short, if you’re pulling a hard drive out of a three- to five-year-old Mac that’s been left powered on for most of its life, you might be better off disposing of it rather than continuing to use it until it fails. But a $40 external enclosure can keep your old drive going as a “just in case” backup, or let you choose the specific brand new internal drive you want from a great manufacturer. Why would you do that? Because if you’re thinking of buying a fully-assembled external drive, you may not know who makes the drive mechanism inside, which can be risky. Here are links to Seagate’s, Hitachi GST’s, and Western Digital’s internal drives, all of which are available in multiple capacities and price points. Just remember, the statistics demonstrate conclusively that cheaper isn’t necessarily better here.

Understanding External Enclosures

When you buy any fully-assembled external hard drive for your Mac, you’re really buying two things: an internal hard drive like the ones shown above, and an external enclosure. To keep costs low, the cheapest external enclosures ($15-$20) often cut corners by using bare-bones chips, cables, and materials. They also may not include power supplies, which means they’re fully dependent on your Mac for power. Buyers consequently sometimes complain about random disconnections, refusals to mount, a lack of Mac compatibility, or other problems.

The Akitio SK-3501U3 enclosure shown here is a very good option for the $35 price. It includes a USB 3.0 cable, a wall power supply, and the screws necessary to mount any 3.5″ hard disk inside. Akitio also sells a 2.5″ enclosure that’s physically smaller and designed solely for laptop drives. (If you instead want to use the SK-3501U3 with an adapter for a smaller 2.5″ laptop drive, the Newer Technology AdaptaDrive Converter is the one I recommend. It’s not needed for 3.5″ drives.)

Akitio’s enclosure is made from thick, solid-feeling aluminum that looks great next to a Mac. As you can see above, it’s a little smaller than the superb G-Tech G-Drive USB I’ve previously reviewed and loved, and its blue data indicator light is off to the back rather than glowing through the mesh front. The light only goes on when it’s connected to a computer and in use. There’s also a bottom-mounted heat sink to keep temperatures down, a design element found on older and larger G-Drives.

Full assembly requires around 15 minutes, one type 0 or sharp type 1 Philips head screwdriver, and zero prior experience. First, four small (and easy to misplace) screws get removed from the enclosure’s bottom, enabling you to slide the hard drive tray out from its center. You flip the tray over, attach four slightly larger screws to the tray and your hard drive, then slide the tray back into the enclosure. After replacing the four bottom screws, you apply four frosted clear rubber feet on top of them. That’s it.

The result is a completely functioning hard drive that’s plenty fast, with modern USB 3.0 connectivity that’s backwards compatible with USB 2.0 computers. Though speeds will vary based on the speed of the internal hard drive you place inside, the Akitio enclosure achieved Blackmagic Disk Speed Test results of 125-127MB/second when my old iMac’s four-year-old Western Digital drive was inside, and a USB 3.0 Mac was connected. That’s nearly as fast as the best speeds I’ve seen with the brand new G-Drive USB I purchased last December.

If your old hard drive will only be needed temporarily, you can consider an external hard drive docking station instead. Unlike enclosures, which are designed to completely cover, protect, and in many cases muffle the sound of the hard drive inside, a docking station such as the $40 Sabrent USB 3.0 dual-dock (shown below) or $23 single dock version can be used briefly to plug in 2.5″ or 3.5″ drives like pieces of bread in a toaster. There are no screws to mess with here; these are completely plug and play solutions. While I wouldn’t recommend them for extended use due to dust and noise considerations, docking stations can be viable alternatives for one-off access to drives you won’t keep using for long periods of time.

On the “easy to difficult” scale, putting your old internal hard drive into either an external hard drive enclosure or docking station is ultra-easy — almost certainly simpler than removing the drive from your Mac. It’s also extremely cost-effective, and there are many times when I’ve benefitted from having an external enclosure around to deal with an older, misbehaving hard drive. Having a 3.5″-sized enclosure with the option of using a 2.5″ adapter strikes me as the right combination for Mac owners with both desktop and laptop hard drives, but laptop owners with 2.5″ drives will be fine with smaller enclosures, and docking stations may work for some people. You can choose the solution that’s best for your personal needs.

Even More Great Options

Read more of my How-To guides and reviews for 9to5Mac here (and don’t forget to click on Older Posts at the bottom of the page to see everything)!

Welcome to our guide to buying the best external hard drive or backup hard drive in 2019. When looking to buy the best external hard drive for your needs, there are quite a lot of things you need to consider - and this guide will help you.

Plus, with Amazon Prime Day 2019 rapidly approaching, there's a good chance that we're going to see some major price cuts to the best external hard drives out there. If you do find a killer deal for any of the drives on this best external hard drive list, then you can buy in full confidence that you're getting a brilliant external drive for your money.

When buying the best external hard drive for your needs, you need to make sure you get a device that can safely and securely store your important files. Reliability is of the upmost importance here, as you do not want to buy an external hard drive that fails on you - making you lose all your important backups.

The best external hard drives will also be quick - either because they use SSD (Solid State Drive) technology, or because they use the latest connectivity technology, such as USB-C.

The biggest deciding factors when it comes to data transfer rates is the connection the drive uses, and whether it is a standard hard drive or a solid state drive (SSD). Many external hard drives use USB 2.0 connections, but for faster speeds you'll want USB 3.0 or ideally the newer USB Type-C connection. You'll need to ensure your PC or laptop also has a USB Type-C port.

You'll also need to think about how much storage space you need. The best external hard drives offer a range of capacities. We'd recommend 500GB to start with, as that gives you plenty of space to store your files without costing too much money.

However, if you deal in large files, such as high resolution photos and videos, then you may want to consider buying a bigger drive, with external hard drives offering terabytes (TB) of storage space.

Buying the best external hard drive for your needs involves figuring out how much space you need. You don't want to buy an external hard drive that's too small, and end up running out of space, but neither do you really want to pay over the odds for storage space you'll never need.

So, we've listed the best external hard drives money can buy in 2019. Each external drive (or backup hard drive) on this page has been carefully picked to make sure it offers fast data transfer speeds – essential if you move lots of big files regularly – while also offering sturdy build quality so you don't have to worry about them breaking and losing your files.

When buying the best external hard drive for your needs, there are certain things you need to take into account. For example, you'll want to make sure you have a drive that offers fast data transfer speeds.

In this guide we list the best external hard drives with both traditional hard drives and faster (and more expensive) solid state drives.

Still, the best external hard drives are also dependable and rugged, so you can safely store your data without worry. The best external drives will also be light enough to carry in your bag, with large capacities so that you can keep your data safe when travelling.

There's a huge range of external hard drives on offer, so we've put together this list of the best external hard drives to help you find the perfect one for your needs.

1. Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC external hard drive

Wireless security

Capacity: 2TB | Interface: USB 3.0

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An external hard drive you can buy without breaking the bank, Buffalo's MiniStation Extreme NFC could be your match made in heaven.

With compatibility for both Mac and Windows machines, the Buffalo MiniStation Extreme NFC is very flexible, and comes with a rugged case that's dust and water resistant, along with a built-in USB 3.0 cable.

Not only is your data kept protected from knocks and drops with the rugged shell, but it's also got 256-bit AES security features and NFC (Near Field Communication) features as well.

Essentially it allows you to unlock the drive to get to your files quickly and easily by tapping the supplied NFC card onto the drive's body. Pretty neat!

• This product is only available in the US at the time of this writing. UK and Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro

2. Western Digital My Passport Ultra 4TB external hard drive

Comes with Encryption and a long warranty

Capacity: 4TB | Interface: USB 3.0

The latest generation of the Western Digital My Passport Ultra range of external hard drives has landed, coming in sizes from 1TB to 4TB. It features cloud storage and 256-AES encryption, along with WD's own software suite.

It is a good performer when it comes to data transfer speeds but doesn't come near the top of the leaderboard. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't reach the top speeds of solid state external drives, but for external hard drives based on traditional HDDs, this is the drive to consider.

3. Samsung T5 SSD external hard drive

The best external SSD of 2018

Capacity: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB | Interface: USB Type-C

If you'd rather have an external hard drive that took advantage of solid state drive (SSD) speeds, then the Samsung Portable SSD T5 is definitely the best external hard drive for you. Samsung has a brilliant reputation for external SSDs, thanks to products like the T3, and the T5 builds on its predecessor by adding a fast USB Type-C connection that ekes out every last drop of performance from the solid state drive inside. Of course, it's also backwards compatible with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 if your PC doesn't have USB Type-C. It's expensive, but it's well worth the cash.

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Read the full review: Samsung Portable SSD T5

4. Adata SD700 External SSD

Capacity: 256GB, 512GB or 1TB | Interface: USB 3.0

The Adata SD700 will suit those looking for a rugged storage device that can provide ample capacity without costing too much. It performs superbly well and remains the only SSD we’ve seen that is IP68 rated.

Thanks to the solid state drive that resides in this external hard drive, it's a lot faster than external drives that use traditional spinning hard drives - so you're getting great transfer speeds as well as rugged protection.

It also comes in capacities up to 1TB, so you don't have to worry about missing out on storage space just because it uses an SSD - this drive really does hit all the right notes.

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5. WD My Book Duo 4TB external hard drive

Capacity: 4TB | Interface: USB 3.0 x 2

If you're looking for the absolute largest capacity external hard drive, then the WD My Book Duo 4TB is the one to get, offering a huge 4TB (you can also get versions with up to 20TB) of storage space over two hard drives.

If you don't mind sacrificing some of the ample storage space you can set the drives up in a RAID array, so you have file backups of your files should one of the drives die.

This USB 3.0 drive has many of the features of a fully-fledged NAS device (including a high price), and if you have a router with a USB 3.0 port you could use this as a network attached storage device in its own right.

The device, which comes with two-year warranty, has 256-bit AES hardware encryption, and automatic backup software (WD SmartWare Pro).

Worth noting that the enclosure used is fully serviceable and that WD ships the drive already pre-formatted for Windows users (NTFS).

6. Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt external hard drive

Best Thunderbolt external hard drive

Capacity: 1TB, 2TB | Interface: Thunderbolt, USB 3.0

If you have a device with a Thunderbolt port, then this is a great option, as it provides twice the speeds of standard USB 3.0 drives. It's also not especially expensive compared to other Thunderbolt drives. The price is kept down due to its use of a traditional hard drive, rather than an SSD, which limits the potential speeds. It also comes with a USB 3.0 port for people without access to Thunderbolt.

• This product is only available in the US and UK at the time of this writing. Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the WD MyBook Duo

7. Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive 5TB

Capacity: 5TB | Interface: USB 3.0

If you want to combine speed and capacity, then the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive 5TB is definitely worth considering. It comes in a range of sizes up to 8TB and it beats the competition when it comes to read and write speeds as well.

On top of this storage and speed, you get a decent amount of peace of mind thanks to Seagate's lower than average failure rates, especially in bigger capacity hard drives.

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You also get backup software, and the drive is compatible with both Windows and Macs, though it's formatted for Windows out of the box unless you go for a Mac-specific hard drive - though these are more expensive.

8. Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro external hard drive

Capacity: 2TB | Interface: USB 3.0 and Wi-Fi

Even if we had mixed feelings on past versions of the My Passport Wireless, the 2016 “pro” variant of the external HDD restores faith in the Western Digital name. The design, for one, has been overhauled and no longer resembles the My Passport Ultra or My Passport for Mac. Instead, there’s now a more premium feel to the My Passport Wireless Pro. It resembles an external DVD drive, but considering the onboard SD card slot, don’t worry about getting it confused with anything else. For photographers, this will make the Wireless Pro stand out.

For everyone else, there’s a massive 6,400mAh battery built into the device. This lets the drive be used completely free of wires over 2.4GHz or 5GHz channels. When it’s wired up, however, don’t expect cutting edge connection tech, as the My Passport Wireless Pro uses only USB Type-B to Type-A. Completely absent is the latest and greatest USB-C connection.

Where the My Passport Wireless Pro compromises on affordability, it’s able to benefit in just about every other area. Of course, not everyone needs a wireless hard drive or SD card support, but for those who do, it’s almost essential.

Read the full review:Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro

9. LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 4TB

Capacity: 4TB | Interface: USB-C

External Hard Drive Mac Windows

You may have stumbled upon the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive when perusing the Apple website for USB-C accessories. There’s a reason for that: the Porsche Design ships with both USB Type-C to Type-A and USB Type-C to Type-C connectors, making it a worthy candidate regardless of your setup.

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It’s expensive for an external hard drive, don’t get us wrong, especially if you’re in the market for the top-end 4TB option. On the other hand, this is an HDD that could theoretically output speeds of up to 5Gbps, if it weren’t hindered by the limits of SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology.

Comprising five 800GB platters in a 15mm form factor, the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile is an excellent challenger to the Seagate M3, though it’s notably bigger in both weight and dimensions.

Sure, it packs an extra convenience factor in the form of USB-C, but it should be noted that the Porsche Design Mobile is still limited to USB 3.0 speeds. Plus, even an aluminum finish can’t prevent it from clashing with your Rose Gold MacBook. Nevertheless, LaCie’s offering is the best USB-C external HDD money can buy, at least for the time being.

Read our full review:LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 4TB

10. iStorage diskAshur 2TB external hard drive

Best for security

Capacity: 2TB | Interface: USB 3.0

Typically, iStorage hard disks cater best to governments and multinational organizations around the world, for good reason too – they offer tight security like no other drives around.

If someone tries to tamper with your iStorage drive, you can configure it to self-desturct. What's more, the data is encrypted by the 256-bit AES protocol, with multiple forms of protection in place to ensure the bad guys don't get in no matter how persistent. When you consider all that extra security, the prices won't scare you away either.

Sure, it's still expensive, four times the price of an equivalent 2TB drive, and unlikely to be the most nimble performer. But, you're paying for a product that's virtually uncrackable. Bear in mind, though, you'll get no help from the manufacturer if things go awry and you lose your password.

Read our full review: iStorage diskAshur DT

Gabe Carey and Matt Hanson also contributed to this article