External drives

5 products from $78 Pay in BTC, ETH or USDT

Portable USB SSDs from SanDisk and Seagate and bus-powered portable hard drives from Western Digital, for backups and moving files between devices. Compare speed and capacity, and pay in BTC, ETH or USDT.

5 products

5 products

Products

Buying external drives at HodlChip

Two kinds of external drive, for different jobs:

  • Portable SSDs: pocket-size, silent and resistant to knocks, with transfer speeds several times faster than a hard drive on a 10 Gbit/s USB port. Good for working files, photo and video projects and fast laptop backups.
  • Portable hard drives: powered by the USB cable, with the most capacity per dollar for backups and archives. They have moving parts, so avoid knocks while they run.

A drive is only as fast as the slowest link: use the supplied cable and a USB 3 port, since a USB 2.0 port caps any drive at about 40 MB/s. Format the drive as exFAT to use it on both Windows and macOS, and set up automatic backups so they run without you having to remember. Keep at least one backup drive away from your computer to protect against theft, fire or ransomware.

Need more capacity or speed? An enclosure with an NVMe SSD makes a very fast external drive, and a 3.5-inch hard drive in an enclosure gives the most space for the money.

Questions about external drives

Portable SSD or portable hard drive?
Choose an SSD for speed, low weight and resistance to knocks, which suits working files and travel. Choose a hard drive for the lowest cost per terabyte, for backups and archives that mostly stay at home.
How should I back up to an external drive?
Use automatic backup software such as File History on Windows or Time Machine on macOS, and keep a second copy somewhere else, such as another drive stored off-site or a cloud service, following the 3-2-1 rule.
Does an external drive work with both Mac and Windows?
Yes. Format it as exFAT to read and write on both, or use your main system's native format for backups: NTFS on Windows, APFS for Time Machine on macOS.