Best External Hard Drive (2026): SSD to Store Data, Video, and More

Best External Hard Drive (2026): SSD to Store Data, Video, and More

If you're running out of storage space on your laptop or you need to back up your data and store that backlog of videos you're going to edit one day (I am, I swear), an external hard drive can solve your problem.

The trouble is, there are hundreds of drive options ranging from dirt-cheap to crazy-expensive—which one is right for your needs?

I've tested dozens, across operating systems and with different use cases in mind, to find the best external hard drives for storage, backups, gaming, video editing, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, and more.

Check out our other guides, including How to Back Up and Move Your Photos Between Services , How to Back Up Your Digital Life , and How to Back Up Your iPhone .

Updated March 2026: We've removed some discontinued drives, added the TerraMaster D1 Pro SSD enclosure, and noted the rapidly rising price of SSDs due to data center growth.

We've also updated prices and links throughout.

Courtesy of Western Digital Save to wishlist Western Digital The AI race and its attendant flurry of memory-hungry data centers is causing memory prices to skyrocket .

Unfortunately, that includes hard drives, especially SSD drives.

If you feel like prices have doubled since that last time you picked up a drive, well, it's not your imagination.

They really have.

8-TB SSDs are selling for more than the price of a new MacBook Air.

You know what data centers don't seem to need, though?

Spinning drives.

While the price has crept up some here as well, older drives remain affordable and are you best choice for backups anyway.

For incremental backups, which we recommend , speed isn't a huge factor.