Best External Drives for Mac in 2026
There are a hundred external drives on Amazon. Three of them are actually worth your money.
Quick answer
For most Mac users, a bus-powered USB-C SSD is the best everyday external drive, and a larger spinning hard drive is the better value for Time Machine backups. Format as APFS for SSDs and Mac-only use, and buy at least twice the capacity you plan to store.
For Time Machine on a typical home Mac, a 2TB external SSD is the sweet spot. Samsung T7 or T9 and Crucial X9 Pro are the ones I recommend most often — fast, durable, USB-C, and silent.
For photo libraries and active projects, get Thunderbolt if your Mac supports it. The OWC Envoy Pro and Samsung X5 are workhorses. The speed difference over USB-C is real when you're scrubbing 4K footage or browsing a 200,000-photo library.
For long-term archival on a budget, a spinning USB drive is fine — the WD Elements series is reliable. Just keep two copies and rotate them.
Format every new drive in Disk Utility as APFS for SSDs or Mac OS Extended Journaled for spinning disks. Don't use the Windows-formatted ExFAT it ships with — you'll lose features and run into permission headaches.
Frequently asked
What format should I use for a Mac external drive?
APFS for Mac-only drives and SSDs, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for older Time Machine setups on spinning drives, and exFAT only when the drive must be shared with Windows.
SSD or hard drive for Mac backups?
Hard drives are the better value for backup capacity; SSDs are worth the premium for working drives you carry and read from constantly.
Do I need a Thunderbolt drive?
Only for large video work. For documents, photos, and backups, a standard USB-C SSD is already faster than the workflow requires.
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