Best Mac External Hard Drives

Audrey Goodwin

2024-04-12 10:55:47 • Filed to: Tips&Tricks of macOS • Proven solutions

The current world is dynamic and leaves Mac users with a lot of data to hold on to and seek. However, the Mac devices have limited space to hold everything. Therefore, one sorts external hard drives for more storage space.

An external hard drive provides Mac users with extra space outside their devices. This storage is convenient because it is also more portable than the Mac laptops and computers. Therefore, it is important to seek the best external hard drives for Macs in 2024 to store your video files, photos, and music, among other items. There are multiple, different but best external hard drives for Mac in 2024 to choose from. Therefore, this article outlines the five top best external hard drives of 2024 on Mac that cannot disappoint you. The information to expect includes their capacity, features and price.

Best External Hard Drives for Macs in 2024

1. Seagate Backup Plus Hub

Seagate Backup Plus Hub is among the best Mac hard drives 2024 since it is the most preferable high-capacity home storage. It is a classic 3.5 inch Mac drive that is available in various sizes such as 4TB and 10TB maximum. It is 198mm deep, 118mm long and 41mm thick.

The Seagate Backup Plus Hub’s sides are glossy black. The bottom, top and back look fairly good since they have a heat-dispensing honeycomb. This external hard drive also has a sloped front that prevents it from resembling a plain plastic brick.

This hard drive has two powered USB 3.0 ports at the front and a microUSB 3.0 socket on its back. You can conveniently use them in the office by placing them intelligently in your set up. Seagate Backup Plus Hub is also capable of charging a tablet or phone.

Despite that it lacks Thunderbolt or USB-C 3.1 ports, the Seagate Backup Hub Pro 10TB has excellent speed. It reads 264MB/s and writes at up to 197MB/s. The 4TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub goes for $129.99, while the 10TB costs $359.99.

2. LaCie Mobile Drive

LaCie Mobile Drive is considered one of the best external hard drives for Macs in 2024 because it is the most preferable for traveling. This external hard drive is covered with aluminum and comes in tow colors, namely space grey and moon silver. The space grey matches the latest Mac models and is only available on Apple Store online.

The LaCie Mobile Drives come in various capacities and thus vary in price. The price of 1 TB storage starts at $75, while the 2 TB costs $100. Both measure about 10mm thick, 122mm long and 88mm wide. The 4TB and 5TB models go for $150 and $170, respectively and are 20mm thick.

This Mobile Drive contains one USB-C port on its back. However, you can still use it with your Mac device since the developer includes cables for the older USB 3.0 alongside the USB-C. The drives can be used for Mac backups with Time Machine.

The LaCie Mobile Drives also have great performance. Their average read and write speed is about 132MB/s.

3. Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch

MacBook owners are in need of the best external hard drives for Mac in 2024 and Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch is exactly that. This is a top-of-the-range model that is available in 1TB and 2TB and is stylish to match the MacBook style. These Ultra Touch drives cost $90 and $110, respectively.

The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch is considered one of the best external hard drives of 2024 on Mac because it offers encryption. It provides extra protection for the data and files that are important. The drives are portable since they measure 78mm wide, 12mm thick, and 115mm long.

They are available in black and white and have a smart woven fabric. At the back, there is a standard USB 3.0 port and respective cable that is compatible with your Mac device. Seagate, the developer, includes a USB-C adapter in case you need to use the drive with USB-C computers.

The Ultra Touch has ToolKit app that has a mirror option that you can use to automatically backup individual folders. This app also handles the encryption process. The drive has great performance although it lacks high-speed backups. It writes and reads at 125MB/s and 130MB/s, respectively.

4. WD My Passport Wireless Pro

WD My Passport Wireless Pro falls under the best Mac hard drives 2024 category because it surpasses all other external storage devices for photographers and home entertainment. It has a 10 hour battery and an integrated Wi-Fi and can also be used like the standard wired hard drive.

Therefore, this is a modern drive, considering that it is also setup using an iOS or Android mobile app. Consequently, the WD Wireless Pro learns the home Wi-Fi network logins and becomes part of it. It appears as a shared network drive that you can access from your Mac device. However, it performs best when attached to a Mac laptop.

The WD My Passport Wireless Pro can back up data wirelessly since the WD Wireless Pro transmits after connecting directly to Wi-Fi networks. It creates 2.4 and 5 GHz hotpots. Therefore, it is great for convenience and versatility despite that its performance is to the best since transfer rates are slower, at 20MB/s. If you use cable, the writing and reading speeds do not exceed 110MB/s.

The drive has an SD card slot and a multi-purpose 4 LED array at the side and top, respectively. It also has the full size USB port at the back for recharging its battery.

This external hard drive goes for $149.99.

5. LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3

The LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 is another of the best external hard drives for Macs in 2024, since it is more than a hard drive. Unlike the above hard drives, the LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 has two drives and each is a 10TB IronWolf Pro disk. With this capacity, the entire hard drive can handle 300TB of workload annually.

However, you can get the 8TB drive at $648.99 while the 20TB goes for $1,198. This high price explains why the drive is best for video editors and professionals.

These drives are not only the best Mac hard drives in 2024 but are also of the highest quality. As a result, the LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 reads and writes large files using SSD-like speeds. These speeds seem to be four times more than the standard external drives, at 495MB/s and 487MB/s, respectively.

This powerful drive has a LaCie application that switches to RAID 1 setup, thus allows simultaneous writing of same data to the two drives and prevents data loss. It has great connectivity through 2 Thunderbolt 3s and 5Gbps USB-C port. It also has CompactFlash connectors, USB 3.0 and SD. Additionally, the LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 has a low-noise Noctua fan that prevents heating of the drives.

Best PDF Editor for Mac in 2024

As you seek to find the best external hard drives for Mac in 2024, you should also use the best PDF editor for Mac. PDFelement for Mac is the most desirable PDF editor for Mac in 2024, because it is powerful and can handle PDF management pressure. It is known to perform perfectly at the workstations and during travels.

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PDFelement for Mac is great at its functionalities and so has a lot to offer your Mac including macOS 11. It approaches PDF document creation in various ways, including creating from other files and through files’ combination. During the former creation form, the program delivers professional PDFs from texts and image formats and scanners as well. This comes with options to perform optical character recognition.

During the latter creation form, PDFelement for Mac combines different files types and files according to your choosing and produces a single PDF. Through add, reorder and split functions, you can have pages in the right order.

You will be pleased to also learn that PDFelement for mac integrates with iCloud services, just in case you forget your external drive. Therefore, it is beneficial as it works with PDFs stored in your external drive or iCloud services. Working as you travel becomes exciting, relaxing and productive.