Best deals portable hard drives

UK: The best Black Friday external hard drive

That makes it more than fast enough for even videographers and pro photographers who need to move large amounts of data around in a hurry. The CalDigit Tuff is a fraction of the price, yet still has several rugged features that should see it dealing with all but the very worst of conditions.

Able to handle submersion in three feet of water for half an hour, the Tuff also has good dirt and dust protection. It comes ready to use on Mac, but can be reformatted to use with Windows or Linux instead. Despite its diminutive size and boardroom-style looks, the T5 is surprisingly robust.

As with all of these superfast drives, though, you need to be using a computer with a USB 3. The T5 has password protection and hardware encryption built in, and is backed by a three-year warranty.

Part-1: Picking from the Best and Cheap External Hard Drives

Smaller than the average smartphone, it weighs less than 1. Transfer speeds are extremely fast, both on the spec sheet and more importantly in independent tests. The Sandisk Extreme Portable is a fairly rugged drive, able to handle drops of over six feet, and its IP55 rating promises a reasonable degree of protection from both water and dust. So, of the three SSD portable drives we list in this guide, which should you buy?

If you want the tiniest, sleekest drive you can find, go for the Samsung T5 instead.

Get our regular email updates with the latest travel tech news, tips, and articles. No spam ever, and you can leave any time. Please check your email for a message from us. You'll need to click the button in that email to confirm your details. While most portable drives need to be plugged into a computer, a few rare models are designed for traveling without one.

Particularly useful for photographers and videographers shooting in rugged, remote locations for a few days, drives like these keep everything backed up without needing to deal with the extra weight and fragility of a laptop. The Western Digital My Passport Wireless is an expensive piece of equipment, but you get plenty for your money. You can set the drive to start copying immediately, or wait until you press a button. The drive also has Wi-Fi support, both 2. The battery in the My Passport Wireless lasts up to ten hours, and can be used to charge phones and other USB devices as needed.

You can also use the drive as a media server, streaming video over the wireless connection at up to 4k.

It can act as a basic Wi-Fi range booster as well. The drive is quite bulky, which is unusual for SSD-based devices. Title image via Sandisk , others via respective manufacturers. Founder and editor of Too Many Adapters, Dave has been a traveler for 20 years, and a geek for even longer. It has a huge range of external drives on offer, and there's usually at least one bargain to be found among them; we expect there to be some great opportunities to nab a lot of storage for not very much cash. If you have your heart set on Black Friday external hard drive deals then the best thing you can do is start looking out for them now.

There's an increasing amount of competition between retailers to shift their discounted stock, so every year we're seeing stores and sites kick off their Black Friday sales earlier. Figure out your budget and exactly what kind of drive you're looking for. If you need plenty of storage and aren't too worried about transfer speeds then you should probably concentrate on old-fashioned hard drives; they might not be fast but they'll give you a lot more gigabytes for your buck. If speed's important, though, you should look for an SSD instead.

They're fast and reliable, and because they have no moving parts they're a lot more suitable for taking out and about with you. The downside is that you get a lot less storage than you would from a comparably priced hard disk; that said as the technology matures you can now get a decent chunk of storage at a pretty reasonable price. Always look for big name brands such as Western Digital or Seagate when you're searching for an external drive; not only are these where you'll probably find the best deals, you can also be much more certain of getting a reliable drive that won't fail on you.

If you spot a dirt-cheap drive from a brand you've never heard of, look around for reviews to get an idea of its reliability; it could be cheap for a very good reason, and it's probably not where you want to stash your important backups. Don't forget to check an assortment of retailers for the biggest choice.

Amazon's Black Friday deals are always worth a look, but explore some other online stores as well. Some of them might have cashback offers that could save you a bit extra, so that's always worth looking out for. Finally, use the same common sense that you would when making any purchase online; check the guarantee, make sure you're buying from a reputable store, and keep your receipt just in case you change your mind later on. SSDs are lightning quick and a lot less fragile than hard disks because they have no moving parts.

Once you've decided whether you need a hard disk or an SSD, the key thing to look for is the amount of storage you'll get. It all depends on your needs, naturally; GB is probably fine if you don't work with enormous files, but if your business involves videos then you're probably well into terabyte territory. Beyond that, the most important thing to check is what type of connections an external drive has.

At the very minimum you'll need a USB 3. If you have a recent Mac then it may have a Thunderbolt 3 port; if so, try to find a drive that's compatible and you'll get lightning-fast transfer speeds. The latest generation features excellent transfer speeds and cloud storage options as well as AES encryption to keep your files safe, and WD's backup software will take care of transferring your data.

If speed's more important to you than capacity, this external SSD from Samsung ought to do the trick. It plugs directly into PCs and Macs with either a USB-C port or USB-A, is roughly the size of a matchbox and, as a solid state device, contains no moving parts, so can survive being dropped unlike a hard disk.

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