Desktop: Some external hard drives can be powered by your computer’s USB port (they’re called BUS powered drives), while others need to be plugged into an outlet.
Your actual speeds will vary based on how many files you’re trying to transfer at once, or the size of the files you’re transferring.Ĭonnector: All external hard drives will connect to your computer via a USB cable, but some modern machines only have USB-C ports, so we made sure to pick drives that can accommodate both newer and older computers. We chose drives that support the USB 3.0 standard, which has a maximum data transfer speed of 640mbps, or USB 3.1 standard, which has a maximum data transfer speed of 1,280mbps. Read and write speed: The speed at which an external hard drive reads and writes data is important to consider because it ultimately determines its performance.
