external hard drive for macbook air 2020

But if you're a videographer, filmmaker, or other professional who works in the field-and if you have a Thunderbolt-3 equipped laptop, so you can take full advantage of the device's performance-you may consider it a bargain even at the $419.99 list price for the 1TB version tested here, or $739.99 for the 2TB version. Most people don't need, and won't want to pay for, the extreme speed and durability of LaCie's Rugged SSD Pro external solid-state drive.

We'll start with a breakdown of our favorite external drives for Macs, followed by a guide to how to shop for the best one for you. Read on as we solve this and all of your other Mac external-storage quandaries. In fact, in many cases it makes sense to choose an inexpensive non-Thunderbolt drive that isn't targeted toward Mac use. So what's a Mac user to do who just wants to back up his or her files using Time Machine, or stash a large video collection? Spoiler: A Thunderbolt drive isn't your only option far from it.

As a result, they are typically external SSDs, or even multidrive RAID arrays, which means they also tend to be expensive. The main difference is that many drives made specifically for Macs use the upgraded Thunderbolt data transfer protocol, which promises super-fast data transfers for photographers and video editors who need to store mountains of footage and access it very quickly. Most laptops with either operating system now come with at least one oval-shaped USB-C port, and it's the one you'll want to use for connecting your external drive. Buying an external hard drive or SSD for your Mac is not all that different from buying one for your Windows PC.

External hard drive for macbook air 2020