However, most Macs since around 2017 have Apple Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 ports which support more than twice the transfer speed than most USB-C can ports can (except USB 4.0 which can transfer data at the same speed as Thunderbolt 3 and 4 which is 40Gb/s). Most external hard drives nowadays use USB-C ports (which are confusingly subdivided into USB 3.1 Gen 1, Gen 2 and Gen 2×2) and USB 4.0 to connect to PCs and Macs. Most external hard drives are already formatted to work out of the box with macOS although some require formatting first depending on whether you want to use them on Apple only products or transfer files between macOS and Windows. The good news is almost all external hard drives work with Macs but there are a few important things to be aware of to avoid disappointment. Do All External Hard Drives Work With Mac?

Whichever hard drive you choose, you can be sure that all the hard drives featured here are compatible with the latest versions of macOS including Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur and Catalina. However, the external hard drive landscape and connection port technologies is constantly changing and it can be difficult to know where to start when buying one.

Now you can get 5 Terabytes (TB) of portable storage (that’s a whopping 5000 GB) for just over $100 such as in the WD My Passport For Mac Portable Hard Drive which we ranked as the best external hard drive for Mac users of 2023 especially for Time Machine users as it comes Time Machine ready. Less than a decade ago, you would have paid several hundred dollars for a chunky hard drive with just a few Gigabytes (GB) of storage space on. The great thing for Mac users is that all of these external storage solutions have never been cheaper and storage sizes have never been bigger.

Thunderbolt drives which are the same as SSD drives but are even faster due to Thunderbolt transfer speeds and are the most expensive.

SDD drives which are Solid State Drives which have no moving parts inside so they are faster but more expensive.

HDD drives which are the cheapest and have moving parts inside (also known as mechanical drives) which we’ve mainly focused on in these reviews.

How To Choose An External Hard Drive For Macsįirstly, it’s important to understand that there are basically three types of external drive on the market:.

What External Hard Drive Does Apple Recommend?.

Best External Hard Drives For Mac Compared.

OWC ThunderBay 4 Raid (Best For Capacity) WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo (Best RAID Drive) WD My Book Duo Desktop RAID (Best For Security) Samsung X5 Portable SSD (Best Thunderbolt Drive) Transcend StoreJet M3 (Best For Photographers) WD My Passport For Mac (Best For Time Machine)

What’s The Best External Hard Drive For M1 & M2 Macs?.

Do All External Hard Drives Work With Mac?.

4tb ssd external drive for mac