best usb c ssd external hard drive for mac

AdvertisementĪ small design is great, but a portable SSD should be durable as well. All of the portable SSDs we tested fit that bill. Most portable SSDs can easily fit in one hand, and some don’t even extend past the confines of your palm. Size and durabilityĪ portable SSD should be small enough to fit into your daily bag comfortably without displacing any of your other necessary items. It’s another roadblock that can keep unauthorized users away from your private data, so it’s worth employing-just make sure to keep that password at the forefront of your mind. In general, we recommend protecting all of your devices with some form of a password and portable SSDs are no exception. It’s likely that if a portable SSD comes with AES 256-bit hardware encryption, it will also give you the option to protect the device with a password.

It’s a standard form of encryption that’s difficult and costly to crack, making it a useful form of protection to have on a drive that stores sensitive information. The most common of the former is AES 256-bit hardware encryption, which protects the data on your drive on a hardware level. Some, but not all, portable SSDs come with hardware encryption and optional password protection. You should not see any bottle-necking when transferring data between your PC and a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 drive if you connect it to a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 port or a Thunderbolt 3 port. While not as fast in terms of Gbps as Thunderbolt 3 ports (40Gbps), this interface is compatible with Thunderbolt 3 ports on new PCs. Almost all of the drives we tested for this guide have a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) interface. In this case, interface means the type of USB that the SSD natively supports. Interface is also important, particularly for read/write speeds. Some drives are pre-formatted for use with specific OSes (usually, if a drive is pre-formatted, it’s for MacOS), so if you're using a different OS, you’ll have to reformat the drive before you can safely transfer files to or from it. Here is usually where you’ll find information about pre-formatting as well. You can usually find a note about compatible operating systems in the tech specs of the SSD. Most portable SSDs available now work across Windows, Mac, and Linux-based devices, but it never hurts to double-check. What to look for in a portable SSD OS compatibility/interface

Best usb c ssd external hard drive for mac