The Best External Hard Drives

Best for: Anyone who wants a bus-powered portable drive that just works with their laptop.

The My Passport is the drive we'd hand to most people. It's a compact, bus-powered portable that runs off a single cable, comes in a wide range of capacities, and ships with WD's backup software and optional hardware encryption. It's a mechanical drive, so it's meant for backups and file storage rather than running demanding apps.

🦉 Owl's take: A safe, sensible default for what most people buy an external drive for.

Best for: Budget shoppers who just want capacity and plug-and-play simplicity.

Seagate's Portable and Expansion drives are about as no-frills as external storage gets, and that's the point. You get a bus-powered mechanical drive that mounts as soon as you plug it in, usually at one of the lowest costs per terabyte you'll find.

🦉 Owl's take: When the goal is maximum terabytes for the least money, this is the obvious pick.

Best for: Anyone backing up a whole computer or archiving large libraries at a desk.

For serious backup capacity, a desktop drive like the WD Elements Desktop gives you far more terabytes than any portable, at a lower cost per terabyte. The tradeoff is that it uses a 3.5-inch mechanical drive that needs its own power adapter, so it lives on your desk rather than in your bag.

🦉 Owl's take: The most storage for the money if you don't need to carry it around.

Best for: People who want scheduled backups and a slightly nicer design.

The One Touch is Seagate's more polished portable, with a fabric-topped enclosure and bundled backup software that can run scheduled backups. Under the hood it's still a mechanical drive aimed at storage and backup, not high-speed work.

🦉 Owl's take: A tidy portable for people who want backup software handled for them.

Best for: Shoppers who want a plain, affordable portable from a third major brand.

Toshiba's Canvio line is the quiet third option alongside WD and Seagate, offering straightforward bus-powered portable drives at competitive prices. Different Canvio tiers add small extras like password protection or a more rugged shell, but the core appeal is a simple mechanical drive that shows up and stores your files.

🦉 Owl's take: A solid backup drive to have in the mix when you're comparing prices.

Best for: Console and PC gamers who need cheap space for their library.

The WD Black P10 is a portable hard drive styled and marketed for gamers, with a metal top and a game-focused design. On a PS5 or Xbox it's a cheap way to store games, and it can play last-gen titles directly, though current-gen games generally still need internal SSD storage to run.

🦉 Owl's take: A budget-friendly way to grow a game library, within a hard drive's speed limits.

Best for: Photographers and videographers who need durable field storage.

The LaCie Rugged is the drive to grab when it's going to leave the desk and get knocked around, wrapped in its signature shock-resistant orange bumper. It's a favorite for offloading and archiving photo and video footage in the field, and it often includes a software or recovery-service bundle aimed at creators.

🦉 Owl's take: The go-anywhere pick for creators who value durability over raw speed.