An external hard drive is a great way to add massive storage to any system.
The humble hard drive has been at the heart of modern PCs for decades, and though SSDs have taken the performance crown, hard drives—or HDDs—still have their place. They're often cheaper per gigabyte, come in much larger capacities, and performance has continued to improve even as SSDs have surged ahead.
Although its advisable to use an SSD for your operating system boot drive, if you want to maximize storage space, store irregularly accessed data long term, or expand your system's storage on a budget, you can use one of the best hard drives to do it. Whether you’re looking for an external hard drive or something that lives inside the case, here are the best hard drives you can buy in 2021.
- Best Hard Drive Overall: Seagate Barracuda
- Most Reliable Hard Drive: Seagate IronWolf 8TB
- Best SSHD: Seagate FireCuda 2TB
- Best 2.5-inch Hard Drive: FireCuda Mobile
- Best Hard Drive For Gaming: WD Velociraptor
- Best External Hard Drive: WD 5TB My PassPort Ultra
- Best Hard Drive for Xbox: WD Black 5TB Game Drive
Best Hard Drive Overall
Seagate Barracuda
The Seagate BarraCuda range of internal hard drives has been one of the most popular for years, and it remains so today thanks to its mix of great performance, silent operation, strong reliability and low price tag. Capacities range between 1TB and 4TB (up to 14TB in the more expensive Pro version) and all of them represent good value for money.
The 2TB model is exceedingly affordable for heaps of storage, and if you're going much larger, an argument could be made for opting for higher quality drives that are rated to have longer lifespans. Still, for the best hard drive overall, the Seagate Barracuda range is a great mix of all the most important hard drive specs and features.
Most Reliable Hard Drive
Seagate IronWolf Pro 8TB
For reliability, you need to look at drives designed with businesses in mind; especially longer term storage solutions. The IronWolf Pro range of networked attached storage (NAS) drives is one of the most reliable hard drive solutions money can buy, coming with extensive lifespans, warranties and its own subscription to Seagate's Rescue Service data recovery scheme.
Drive capacities start at 4TB and go all the way up to 18TB per drive, and can operate in configurations of up to 24 drives in a large NAS array. These drives are rated to be written at up to 300TB per year, with a five year warranty to provide even greater peace of mind. No hard drive is 100% safe, but if you want the ultimate in hard drive reliability, the IronWolf Pro range is your best bet.
Best SSHD
Seagate FireCuda 2TB
SSHDs combine the fast performance of an SSD with the high storage capacity of a hard drive in a package that is designed to be the best of both worlds. In reality, they're neither as fast as standalone SSDs nor as affordable as hard drives. But they are far faster than most hard drives, so if you have to use a hard drive and want to get the best SSHD, the Seagate FireCuda 2TB is it.
It's cheaper than comparably sized SSDs, offering much more storage space for your money, whilst still out performing almost all hard drives to give you better game load times and faster system boot times; all at a price that isn't out of this world.
Best 2.5-inch Hard Drive
Seagate FireCuda Mobile 1TB
You can't get heaps of storage space in the 2.5-inch form factor in the same way as you can with larger drives. What you can do, though, is maximize the performance, and that's where the Seagate FireCuda Mobile 1TB comes in. It features its own DRAM cache, so it’s much faster than traditional hard drives at specific tasks like booting to Windows and starting games, and it has enough space to pack a decent number of games, applications or regularly accessed files.
There are bigger drives out there, and SSDs are still noticeably faster, but at this size, the Seagate FireCuda 1TB is one of the best hard drives you can buy. Its combination of low noise levels, performance and lengthy warranty make it hard to beat.
Best Hard Drive For Gaming
Western Digital Velociraptor 500GB
It's been many years since hard drives held the storage performance crown, but when they did, the WD Raptor drives were king. Today, the fastest dedicated hard drives in the world are the 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptors, and though they're expensive for their capacity, especially compared to faster SSDs, they offer the kind of performance that other hard drives can only dream of.
It's available in capacities up to 1TB, but that model is far more expensive than it warrants. The 500GB model is the most cost effective, and it still gives you plenty of space for a handful of AAA games, or many smaller ones like indie titles. This drive falls behind both SATA and NVMe SSDs and some SSHDs overall, but it's still plenty fast, and if you don't have heaps of games you want to play, this 500GB WD VelociRaptor drives is one of the best gaming hard drives you can buy.
Best External Hard Drive
WD 4TB My PassPort Ultra
External drives can be a great way to expand your system's storage or backup your data to an offline, local storage solution. There are a number of super fast drives built on SSD technology, but external hard drives are far more affordable, especially at greater capacities. The best external hard drive in 2021 is the WD My PassPort Ultra, which combines an expansive 4TB capacity with an attractively low price tag and reasonable HDD performance.
It's built with a single USB-C connector for both power and data transfer, hitting up to USB 3.0 speeds. It includes support for hardware encryption to better protect your data, and comes with a three year warranty. It's also compact and lightweight, making it a great drive to slip into your pocket or bag if you want to take a lot of media with you on a journey. Just be aware that external hard drives are much more susceptible to drop damage than external SSDs, so take care of them.
Best Hard Drive for Xbox and PlayStation
WD Black P10 Game Drive 4TB
The latest generations of Xbox and PlayStation consoles use internal NVMe drives for unprecedented console storage speeds and faster game load times. But internal storage only goes so far, and you won't find multi-terabyte NVMe drives at anything close to affordable prices.
That makes the best external hard drives like the WD Black P10 4TB Game Drive a great solution for expanding your local game collection. You'll need to transfer newer games to the internal SSD (or a Seagate Expansion Card) to make the most of new games' faster load times, but this drive at least lets you have your games local and ready to go. Better yet, they're a great solution for playing games from the previous generations, which show less benefit from being played on SSDs.
