The downside here is the price. At $600 for the 4-TB version (which is the minimum you’d want for working with ProRes RAW video files), this is a very pricey drive. It is however, well worth the money if it’s speed you’re after.
Best Budget Portable SSD
These Crucial drives are my favorite general-purpose external storage drives. They’re reasonably priced (for a portable SSD) and speedy enough for most uses. The X6 is lightweight and tiny, making it a good choice for working at the coffee shop.
This isn’t a blinding-fast hard disk. In fact, under the hood, the X6 uses an older drive interface (Serial AT Attachment, or SATA), which was more common with spinning hard drives. So while it’s small and light, its speed is limited by that older interface technology. In my testing on Windows and macOS, that works out to about 550 MB/s read speed and 208 MB/s write speed. That’s good enough for backup and use as an external drive, but I don’t recommend it for Xbox or PlayStation use. It does work fine with the iPad Pro though.
The major downside is the plastic construction—it’s a portable hard drive, not an indestructible hard drive. If you’re worried about it breaking in your bag, grab a padded case. There are plenty out there, like this one. The Crucial X9 (below) is a step up from the X6, both in terms of build quality (it’s metal to the X6’s plastic) and speed, but the X9 is considerably more expensive.
Other Great Budget Drives
- Kingston XS1000 2-TB for $120: This tiny little drive is the smallest in this guide. Like the Crucial X6, it has a mostly plastic enclosure, but it has withstood life in my bag quite well. While it’s not as robust as the padded options below, it’s strong enough for most things. It’s also speedy. Kingston claims up to 1,050 MB/s. I never managed that, but I routinely hit around 800 MB/s, with some older laptops closer to 600 MB/s, which is still quite good. The drive bogs down a bit with large files (MP4s, for example), so it’s not the best for pro videographers, but for everyone else, this is a solid, slightly cheaper option.
Best for Photographers
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Crucial’s X9 Pro hits the sweet spot of speed, portability, and price to be one of the best drives out there for photographers looking to make backups in the field. These drives are tiny, about half the size of a deck of cards, and weigh a mere 1.3 ounces (38 grams). They’ll connect to just about anything. I tested the X9 Pro on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS and never hit any issues with any of them. When it comes to speed, the X9 Pro claims symmetrical read and write speeds, at 1,050 MB/s. I actually consistently got higher speeds, up to 1,110 MB/s for read and 1,100 MB/s for write. That puts the X9 Pro at the top of the pack in terms of portable drive speed.
I’ve been testing the X9 Pro for several months now, and while I can’t yet speak to the long-term survival rate, I have been testing X6 and X8 drives from Crucial for over two years now without issue. There is also the X10 Pro drive ($180), which offers even faster speeds if you have a PC that supports USB 2X2. (The latest Intel chips support this spec, but Apple does not, so there’s no point in buying the X10 Pro if you have a Mac.) I do not own a PC that supports USB 2X2 for extensive testing, but I did get a chance to at least try it, and the X10 Pro does indeed deliver on its promise of 2,100 MB/s (I got it up to 2,050 MB/s). If your hardware supports it, the X10 Pro is worth the extra money.
Best Go-Anywhere Drive
Photograph: OWC
OWC
Envoy Pro Elektron SSD
If you need a drive that can stand up to life in a backpack or camera bag, get wet, or handle a drop onto hard surfaces, OWC drives are your best choice. It’s tough to pick a winner here because there are many solid options, but OWC’s Elektron drive narrowly beat others in benchmark tests. I also like that you can swap out the drive inside the aluminum casing (it’s easy to unscrew), which means two years from now, you can pick up a faster bare SSD and drop it in the hardy Elektron enclosure.
Other Great Rugged SSDs
- Sabrent Rocket Nano 1-TB SSD for $120: I really like this one. It’s smaller and slightly faster than the OWC, but it has two drawbacks. The first is that it can get hot. If you’re trying to work with it in your lap, it can be downright uncomfortable. The other issue is that sometimes it’s slow to be recognized by my PC. I could find no pattern to this; sometimes it appeared right away, and other times it took a couple of minutes. If those things don’t bother you, this drive is tiny, cheaper, and includes a padded rubber case.
Best Padded Drive
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
The go-anywhere drives above are a solid solution for people who need to make backups in the field, like photographers and videographers. But if you want an extra level of comfort, this padded drive from LaCie has long been a favorite of travelers. LaCie makes both an SSD version and a traditional spinning drive version. If speed isn’t an issue, as with making nightly backups, then the cheaper spinning drive makes more sense. If you’re backing up in the middle of a photo shoot or similar situation where backing up needs to happen fast, the SSD version is what you want.
Other Great Padded Options
- Samsung T7 Shield 2-TB SSD for $149: It isn’t as padded as LaCie’s rugged drives, but it’s cheaper and delivers nearly the same speed. It has an IP65 rating, which means it’s fine in the rain and is protected from dust and sand. The T7 line is notable for its built-in security features like hardware-based encryption, but unlike the Touch model, the Shield does not have a fingerprint reader. Still, if you don’t need the full padded protection of the LaCie and want to save a little money, the T7 Shield is a good option.
Best Gaming Drive
Photograph: Western Digital
Western Digital
P40 Gaming Drive
Take this category with a grain of salt. Most of the drives here will work just fine for gaming (just stick with the fastest you can afford). That said, Western Digital’s new P40 does have some cool RGB lights on the bottom if that’s your jam. In my testing, that didn’t seem to impact power consumption.
As for speed, my tests were inconsistent. This drive is capable of speeds that handily beat both the Envoy Pro and Samsung T7, but at other times it seemed to bog down (at least in benchmarks). In real-world use, the bottleneck I consistently hit was some lag in transferring huge amounts of data. That might be a deal-breaker for some, but for the price, it remains a solid choice.
Best Bare Drive
Photograph: Western Digital
If you want to put a bigger SSD in your laptop, all you need is a bare drive, which is generally cheaper than the drives with enclosures listed above. The first thing to figure out is which drive your PC uses. Consult your manufacturer’s documentation to find out. In my experience, the most common form factor is M.2 2280, which is the long, thin drive in the image above. More compact laptops may use the similar, but shorter, M.2 2242 design. Again, check your PC to confirm the drive it needs before you buy. There are a ton of these on the market, and I haven’t had time to test many yet, but so far, out of the half dozen I have tried, Western Digital’s WD Black series has stood out for speed, and it doesn’t run very hot.
The SN 770 M.2 2280 achieved speeds of 5,100 MB/s in my testing, which is blazing fast. If you’re doing a lot of drive-intensive tasks, like editing video or gaming, this drive is well worth the money. The largest version you can get is 2 TB, but the price is reasonable considering the speed increase. I’ve been using it as my main drive for several months and found it fast enough for everything I do, including editing 5.2K video footage and compiling software. My favorite part? It generates very little heat. My older Dell XPS 13 used to get too hot to use without something between it and my lap. Now it doesn’t get hot until I start trying to export video, but quickly cools off as soon as it’s done.
Other Options
- Western Digital SN850X 2-TB SSD for $85: This drive is so screaming fast I had to run my tests twice because I didn’t believe the first result. Western Digital claims up to 7,300 MB/s read speeds, and in benchmark tests, this drive’s results came close. To take full advantage of the speed here, you’ll need a system that supports the PCIe 4.0 SSD standard, but this is a great drive if you want to upgrade a gaming system, whether it’s a desktop PC or your PlayStation. This drive is also one of the few I’ve seen that’s available up to 8-TB capacity.
- Samsung 990 Evo Plus 2-TB for $143: The 990 EVO Plus is an upgrade to the very popular 990 EVO. The original did not offer anything compelling and never made this guide, but the new version manages to be impressively speedy and not overly hot, as many Gen 5 PCIe disks I’ve tested have been. The 990 EVO Plus also launched with a 4-TB model, something missing the first time around. In terms of speed it doesn’t quite match the SN850X above, topping out at 5,677 MB/s read, but it’s plenty fast for most uses and remains quite cool even when pushed. If you’re looking for a good all-around drive that stays cool, this one makes a good choice, though it is on the pricey side for what you get.
