The Best External Hard Drives and SSDs for Mac in 2025

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Buying an external hard drive or solid-state drive for your Mac is much like buying one for your Windows PC; most computers of either stripe now have at least one oval USB-C port for drive connections. The main difference? Some drives designed for Macs use the pro-focused Thunderbolt interface for super-fast data transfers. Do you just want to back up using Time Machine or stash an extensive video collection? An inexpensive non-Thunderbolt drive not meant explicitly for Macs should suffice. We've been testing PC storage for four decades, and for every drive we review, our analysts run standardized benchmark tests measuring speed and program launch times, and assess drives on design, bundled software, cost per gigabyte, and more. Our top general-use external SSD for Macs is Crucial's X9 Pro, but below is a breakdown of other favorite tested picks, plus all the shopping advice you need.

What File System Is Best for a Mac External Hard Drive?

We mentioned Thunderbolt up top. Before we get to Thunderbolt, we need to address a fundamental building block of hard drives that has always affected compatibility and probably always will: the file system.

An external drive's file system is the most critical factor in determining whether it's readable by Macs, PCs, or both. Starting with macOS "High Sierra," Cupertino ditched its venerable Mac OS Extended file system, commonly abbreviated as HFS+, and switched to an entirely new file system. It's simply called the Apple File System (APFS), the first format used across both Macs and iOS devices.

What Is the Difference Between Mac OS Extended and APFS?

You'll find many benefits to switching from HFS+ to APFS, including better security thanks to native encryption, but the most essential thing to note for external-drive shoppers is backward-compatibility. Any drive formatted with HFS+ will work just fine with a Mac that's running High Sierra or later.

Neither Apple File System nor HFS+ works with Windows, however. If you plan to use your external drive with computers that run both operating systems, you should consider formatting your drive with the exFAT file system. You won't get the security and efficiency of APFS, but you will get the convenience of transferring files back and forth between Windows and macOS simply by plugging in and unplugging your drive.

Of course, you can easily wipe and reformat most external drives, so you're not limited to buying only those intended for use with Macs. If you really fancy a consumer-oriented drive formatted for Windows (which will usually come pre-formatted in the NTFS format), you can use the macOS Disk Utility to reformat it after you bring it home from the store. Some highly specialized external drives might not work with Macs even if they're formatted correctly, but consumers looking for extra space simply to store backups or extensive video collections aren't likely to encounter them.

External Drives: SSDs vs. Spinning Platters

Once you've settled on a file system, you must determine which storage medium you want: solid-state or spinning disk. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and—unlike the file system—the type you buy is the type you're stuck with for the life of the drive.

A solid-state drive (SSD) offers quick access to your data because it stores your bits in a type of flash memory rather than on spinning platters. SSDs are often smaller and lighter than spinning external drives, as well, which is also thanks to the lack of moving parts. Most fit into a jacket or pants pocket, which makes them a better choice if you're looking for a portable external drive that you'll be carrying with you frequently. (See our overall picks for favorite external SSDs.)

One major downside, however, is that they're more expensive. You could pay more than 20 cents per gigabyte for an SSD, while spinning drives can be had for less than 10 cents per gigabyte—and often much less. External SSDs also have lower capacity limits, with most drives topping out at either 2TB or 4TB. Compare that with external spinning drives, which are easy to find even in capacities in excess of 8TB for desktop-style drives or up to 5TB for portable ones.

For professional videographers who edit lots of 4K footage and gamers or movie buffs who have large libraries of multi-gigabyte titles, an external RAID array made up of multiple platter-based drives is worth considering since it combines speed approaching that of an SSD with the gargantuan possible capacities of spinning drives. An array contains two or more drives that all work together to increase throughput or guard your precious files against corruption via drive redundancy if one of the drives fails. (Or both; it depends on how the array is set up.) The result is that you can get SSD-like speeds, with throughput of more than 400MBps, and capacities that top out close to 50TB. You'll pay handsomely, of course—some Mac-specific arrays cost thousands of dollars.

On the other hand, if you're looking to buy an external drive mainly to back up your files (which you should definitely do), and it will rarely leave your home office, an inexpensive spinning drive will work just fine. These come in both portable and "desktop" versions.

The portables are obviously smaller and based on the kinds of 2.5-inch platter drives used in laptops. Desktop-style external hard drives are larger and based on the beefier and more capacious 3.5-inch drives used in full-size desktop PCs. They require their own AC power source. Portable drives don't have a power plug; they get the juice they need to run through their data interface.

Does Thunderbolt Matter, or Will USB-C Do?

So, to recap: Faster, smaller (both physically and in terms of gigabytes) solid-state drives come at a premium, while spinning drives offer a much better value while sacrificing speed. But what happens when you throw yet another variable into the mix: the connection between your drive and your Mac? As you might have guessed, the answer is more trade-offs.

Every current Mac comes with oval-shaped USB Type-C ports that support Thunderbolt speeds. Some Macs have Thunderbolt 4, while older ones have Thunderbolt 3, but both have the same maximum 40GBps maximum throughput, which is many times the speed of regular USB-C ports.

Unfortunately, you won't find all that many Thunderbolt-compatible drives on the market. Some Mac-specific drives are even still sold with USB 3.0 connectors. Moreover, the Thunderbolt drives you can buy are constrained by the maximum throughput of the drive itself rather than the Thunderbolt interface. Until a few years ago, most external SSDs topped out at around 600MBps, for instance, due to the bus types used by the drives inside the chassis. That's more than fast enough for backups and occasionally transferring multi-gigabyte files but considerably lower than Thunderbolt's maximum throughput.

However, that speed ceiling is rising. While older external SSDs have been limited by the internal electronics (generally a drive and controller using the older Serial ATA bus inside the drive), late-model drives use different internal components based on PCI Express drives using the NVMe protocol. These kinds of components in newer drives help Thunderbolt reach more of its speed potential. Drives with rated peak reads and writes in the 1,000MBps to 3,500MBps range indicate one of these PCI Express/NVMe drives. (Again, see our roundup of the best external SSDs for more discussion of this.)

You can insist on Thunderbolt support if you know you need all the speed you can get, but a USB-C drive will be a better pick if you're more price-sensitive or need to use the drive with a PC. With USB-only drives, some manufacturers include a USB Type-C cable for people who own a USB Type-C-only Mac, and you can always pick up a converter for a few dollars online if the drive you're eyeing doesn't offer one. And don't forget that some recent Macs, such as the Mac Studio, come with USB 3.1 ports, so they won't require adapters.

Can I Use Any External Hard Drive for a Mac?

Drives intended for PCs sometimes come bundled with software that isn't compatible with macOS, but that doesn't mean you can't use such drives with Macs as long as you format them correctly, as mentioned above. This essentially means that you can use almost any external hard drive with a Mac, even if it doesn't specifically say that it's Mac-compatible. As for the drive's software, you can often replicate it using features built into macOS. For example, some drives come with software that automatically backs up your files to the drive when connected. Such software isn't as much of a consideration for Mac users, who already have an excellent built-in backup option in the form of Time Machine. (See our guide to using Time Machine for backups.)

Unless your drive is never going to leave your home or office, you should also consider its physical durability. Rugged, waterproof drives are a fine option not just for surfers and BMX riders, as their marketing suggests, but also for people carrying their drives to and from school or work, where they might occasionally get spilled on or dropped on the floor. (Check out our favorite rugged drives.)

Finally, you might want to consider how the drive will look when plugged into your Mac. Some drives come in a variety of colors, and many others feature copious amounts of aluminum and industrial-chic styling to match the design cues of your MacBook or iMac.

Ready to Buy the Right External Hard Drive for Your Mac?

We've selected a host of our favorite drives, all of which were tested on Windows and macOS systems. For more options, check out our main list of best external hard drives and our top picks for external SSDs.