External storage needs hit everyone eventually, whether you’re backing up years of photos or hauling project files between work and home. Traditional hard drives (HDD) offer cheap capacity but crawl along at speeds that make large file transfers feel like watching paint dry.

The Crucial X10 4TB SSD is now available at $229 and boasts speeds of 2,100MB/s that traditional HDDs can’t match, all offered at 42% off the retail price this Black Friday. The cost gets close to the price range in which basic 4TB hard drives are sold, although the performance upgrade here ends the waiting altogether when using the latter.

SanDisk is one of the most-trusted names when it comes to external storage drives and devices, and this SSD has a 4.6-star rating (out of five) from more than 7,000 reviews online. It’s got 4TB of storage with up to 2000MB/s of read and write times, for ...

External HDDs provide massive storage at low costs but speed becomes the limitation the moment you need to access that data quickly: Transferring 100GB of files turns into 15-minute waits on mechanical drives while video editing directly from HDDs creates stuttering timelines and frustrated creative workflows.

The desktop form factor prioritizes capacity and reliability over portability. The drive would sit on your desk, connected to power and USB, serving as a permanent storage expansion rather than as a travel companion. This allows for larger platters and better cooling than portable drives crammed into smaller enclosures.

The Samsung T7 Shield rugged SSD launched in 2022 with a maximum of 2TB of capacity and is now available with twice that. T7 Shield is a a credit-card size external SSD intended for outdoor content creators or travelers. It works with Mac and iPad plus a ...

With 4TB versions of its WD My Passport SSD, SanDisk Extreme, SanDisk Extreme Pro, and WD Black P50 Game Drive, Western Digital becomes the first major drive manufacturer to launch external SSDs of that capacity. Since 2004, I have worked on PCMag’s ...

Whether your Mac is running out of space or you just want a cheaper way to upgrade your storage, an external drive is a necessity.