2025-08-22
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today usually come with 1TB drives (equivalent to approximately 1,000GB of hard drive storage), but the drives get full quickly if you aren’t good about taking games off the drive as you add more. And most new computers don’t come with much internal hard drive storage space unless you’re splurging on a high-end model — they usually have 256GB or 512GB. One way to manage it all is to find the best external hard drive and solid-state drive for your needs. External storage is a great way to maximize performance without maxing out the budget.
A traditional hard drive or mechanical drive that uses “old” hard drive technology (mechanical platters and a moving read-write head to access data) is adequate for the majority of users, thanks to speedier and USB 3.0 (as well as ) interfaces. Prices have dropped significantly in the last few years, with even the high-capacity, state of the art, all-around best external hard drive models tipping the scales at 5TB but costing just over $100. A solid-state drive doesn’t have moving parts and the external SSD drive has up to four times faster read and write speed, but it costs a lot more per gigabyte.
Most of the options on this list of the best external hard drive models will work across platforms — whether you have a Windows PC, Mac computer, PlayStation or Xbox — so long as the drives are correctly formatted for the right platform. But a lot of the time they’ll be designated as working with a specific platform out of the box and sometimes come with backup software that’s platform-specific. Unless otherwise indicated, all the PC drives mentioned here are compatible with Windows but can be formatted for a Mac. Many of them include cables or adapters to accommodate USB-C and USB-A ports. But if they don’t happen to be included, you can easily buy .
And remember: A single backup doesn’t cut it. Ideally, you’ll want redundant backups either off-site or using cloud storage for key data and large files (such as family photos) in case of theft or fire. And make sure to encrypt your data, too.
One important note for console gamers is that the newer and consoles are much more restrictive about using external drives. and play PS4 games from an external drive, but not PS5 games; the Xbox Series X can store Series X games, but you’ll have to transfer them to the main SSD to actually play them. The Xbox Series X offers a proprietary and you can now install to expand storage for PS5 games.
With those caveats noted, our current top picks for the best external hard disk drive and external solid-state drive are below. These (or nearly identical models with less storage capacity) have been used or anecdotally tested by CNET editors. We’ll update our list of the best external hard drives and SSDs as we test new products.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Western Digital, which owns SanDisk, sells its WD My Passport SSD as well this SanDisk External Portable SSD for basically the same price. I like the design of this model a little better and it’s technically ruggedized with an IP55 rating, meaning it can withstand a sustained spray of water. It’s also shock-resistant and has a USB-C interface.
The cheaper “older” version has transfer speeds up to 550MBps while the next-gen version nearly doubles that speed with up to 1,050MBps (just over 1GB per second) and only costs slightly more for the 1TB version. The price for the 2TB model of this external drive jumps to $280 for the newer version.
Your speed will vary if you’re moving a mishmash of files to or from the USB drive, but when copying a single large file you should be able to get close to those fast transfer speeds.
David Carnoy/CNET
For better or worse, there’s currently only one way to expand the storage on your Xbox Series X/S for next-gen Series X/S games: the Seagate Expansion Card. Similar to the storage situation with the PS5, you can plug in any external SSD or hard drive to expand the storage for standard Xbox games (previous-gen), but you can only store native Xbox Series X/S games on the game console’s internal memory or the Seagate Expansion Card.
It plugs into a proprietary slot on the back on the Xbox Series X/S and “replicates the Xbox Velocity Architecture” (Microsoft’s internal NVMe SSD tech) with peak speeds of up to 2.4GBps of raw I/O throughput. Microsoft says that’s more than 40x the throughput of the Xbox One.
The expansion card now comes in a more affordable 512GB version for $140 along 1TB ($220) and 2TB ($400) versions. The 2TB version can be hard to find in stock.
David Carnoy/CNET
You can expand storage for PS4 games on your PS5 by adding a standard external SSD because you can play PS4 games directly from an external SSD. However, that’s not the case for PS5 games, which take up a ton of space and can only be played from the PS5’s internal drive or an M.2 SSD that you install in a special expansion bay inside your PS5.
While the Seagate FireCuda 530 technically isn’t an external SSD, it’s not so different from Seagate’s Storage Expansion Card for the Xbox Series X/S in that it’s an NVMe SSD with very high transfer speeds (up to 7,300MBps, according to Seagate, though my PS5 listed the top rate at 6,800MBps ).
Several M.2 SSDs will work with the PS5 () but ideally, you want one with an integrated heatsink. Otherwise, you’ll have to add one.
The Seagate FireCuda 530 with heatsink starts at $140 for the 512GB version and jumps to $210 for the 1TB version (most popular), $400 for the 2TB version and over $1,000 for the 4TB version.
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