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For example, we took the WD Black My Passport portable drive and compared the prices of the 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB drive, on capacity and price.

Its both a useful means of data backup and storage, and a way to transport files from your desktop or laptop to another device.

Xbox One X users, as well, would be wise to invest in an external drive as a way of augmenting the consoles measly 1TB hard drive (the external drive needs to be USB 3.0-compatible and will be formatted when you insert the drive).

Two things are for sure: No one ever said they wanted less storage space, and no one ever said they wanted a slower drive.

Our latest top picks for best external performance drive ( SanDisks Extreme Pro Portable and Samsungs T7 ) are blazing-fast, great news if youre moving around large amounts of data.

If backup or connectivity are your priorities, well also walk you through our other top picks, and everything you need to know to buy the best external drive for your needs.

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And while were talking about storage drives, know how to monitor the health of your hard drives the preservation of your precious data depends on it.

Why Well, you can never have enough, can you Sure, the 4TB version is actually a tick lower in cost-per-terabyte, but that extra space can be invaluable if it allows you to jam all your valuable files onto this drive before gently placing it in a safe.

After all, they dont call it bulk storage for nothing.

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Read our full review of the WD My Passport.) Runner-up.

Its fast with large files, but on the slow side with small ones.

Regardless, its a worthy drive that gives you more space for your movies and games.

It tops out at 5TB in a single drive and can also be had in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities.

Theres even a fast 4TB version that uses two hard drives in RAID for more performance.

In our tests of the 4TB version, we found the Seagate to be slightly faster with large file transfers (think movies) but worse with small file transfers (think Office documents).

Its still a worthy runner-up, though.

Read our full review of Seagates Backup Plus Portable.) Best performance USB drive.

Burst performance is roughly on a par with the runner-up Samsung T7s, but it blows that drive out of the water during long writes.

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SanDisks drive doesnt offer the T7s handy and fun fingerprint security, but its about the same price and offers software-based password protection if security is a concern.

Compared to its predecessor the T5 (which will still be available) its thinner, a significantly faster reader, and it also sports a fingerprint scanner.

Sure, you could get an official FIPS-certified secure drive, but those cost far more than the T7, which gives you this extra bit of security while remaining within the price range (currently 130 on Amazon for the 500GB model we tested) of a normal USB SSD.

That makes it a sweet deal for the average user who still wants effective data protection.

Lets just say its stupidly fast and kinda like putting a scorching Samsung 970 Pro in an enclosure that fits in your pocket and not giving up much performance at all.

Notice that we dont say best portable performance Thunderbolt 3 drive, because by very definition, a Thunderbolt 3 drive should be blazingly fast.

The only reason were not universally recommending the Portable SSD X5 is the relative rarity of Thunderbolt 3 ports on PCs.

See the full review of the Portable SSD X5 on our sister site Macworld.) What you need to know before you buy USB IF.

Many assume the lowest-cost drive gets you the most value, but it often doesnt.

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