Scan the list below and be sure to refer to the FAQ at the end of the article if you need help understanding which kind of drive is right for you. We’ve rounded up some of the very best external hard drives for Macs. But if you want to access your Photo Library or edit raw 4K video from an external drive, you’ll want a speedy SSD-and probably Thunderbolt 3 if your Mac supports it. While a voluminous HDD might not be the best thing for running programs from, it’s perfectly suitable for Time Machine backups. So what hard drive should you get for your Mac? That largely depends on how you plan to use it.
And some drives support esoteric technology like RAID. You have to choose between two kinds of drives-HDDs and SSDs-as well as the interface (USB or Thunderbolt). Buying a hard drive can seem harder than it should be, though.
