There’s a lot to consider when it comes to buying additional storage and it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the different interfaces, capacities and types of hard drive available. Before you rush out to buy yourself some new storage, or maybe a hard drive for backup purposes, you’ll want to look at some of our highly recommended options.

If you’re after a reliable portable hard drive for transporting your images on the move, or if you’re in the market for a desktop version, check out these superb options.

G-Technology G-Drive Mini 1TB

Price: £155

Website: www.g-technology.com

With its slick aluminium construction, HFS+ formatting and built-in Time Machine compatibility this 2.5in portable hard drive is primarily designed for Apple computers, although Windows users can easily reformat it to NTFS or FAT32. Given its obvious Apple leanings, it’s a little surprising that the G-Drive Mini doesn’t offer Thunderbolt connectivity. Ultimately this isn’t cause for concern, as the drive packs one USB 3.0 and two Firewire 800 ports on the back. One further area where it stands out is its 7,200rpm platter, which helps to make it one of the fastest portable HDDs on the market.

Key specs:

Connectivity 1x USB 3.0 / 2x FireWire 800

Rotational Speed 7,200rpm

Max Write Speed 120MB/s

Dimensions 126 x 81 x 23mm

Weight 517g

Compatibility Mac and Windows

 

LaCie Rugged Mini 1TB

Price: £85

Website: www.lacie.com/uk

This rugged portable drive is ideal for those who regularly travel with their drive, and want to protect their data against knocks and bumps. In the home they are also an insurance policy against mischievous or curious children. Its aluminium case is further protected within a thick rubberised sleeve that makes the 2.5in LaCie Rugged shockproof to drops of up to 1.2m and crushproof to a weight of one tonne. There’s also built-in password protection software that uses AES 256-bit encryption. Connectivity extends to one USB 3.0 port and one Thunderbolt port – these also power the drive.

Key specs:

Connectivity 1x USB 3.0 / 1x Thunderbolt

Rotational Speed 5,400rpm

Max Write Speed 85MB/s

Dimensions 89 x 140 x 24mm

Weight  240g

Compatibility Mac and Windows

Western Digital My Passport Wireless 1TB

Price: £140

Website: www.wdc.com/en

The big selling point of the My Passport Wireless is that it comes with a rechargeable li-ion battery and built-in SD card reader. This means that it can be used on location instead of a computer to back your images up almost as soon as you’ve captured them. The device also supports FTP, which enables photographers with a compatible Wi-fi camera to upload images directly to the drive without having to remove the card. Used as a portable Wi-fi hub up to eight individual Android and iOS devices can simultaneously access content stored on it using Western Digital’s free My Cloud app.

Key specs:

Connectivity 1 x USB 3.0 / SD card slot / Wi-Fi

Rotational Speed  5,200rpm

Max Write Speed 114MB/s

Dimensions 127 x 86 x 24mm

Weight 272g

Compatibility Mac, Windows, Android, iOS

Samsung Portable T1 SSD 1TB

Price: £430

Website: www.samsung.com

Released only a couple of months ago the T1 neatly showcases the practical benefits of Samsung’s innovative Vertical-NAND flash technology that stacks individual flash memory cells on top of one another to increase capacity, lower power consumption and reduce the chances of cell-to-cell interference. The end result is something that’s incredible tiny. It’s also one of the fastest consumer-grade portable drives on the market, with claimed read speeds of up to 450MB/s. Our only niggle is that for all the wondrous technology inside, the exterior feels a bit flimsy for the price.

Key specs:

Connectivity 1x USB 3.0

Rotational Speed n/a

Max Write Speed 450MB/s

Dimensions 71 x 92 x 53mm

Weight 26g

Compatibility Mac and Windows

Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB

Price: £50

Website: www.seagate.com

The Seagate Backup Plus Slim offers a convenient way to archive your entire digital life. This is down to the intuitive Dashboard software, which allows you to configure your drive to back-up not just locally-stored files, but also all the images and videos you’ve uploaded to popular social media sites. You can also use the Dashboard to upload files stored on the drive to a range of sites. While the drive is formatted with the NTFS file system, an OS X driver is pre-loaded, allowing Mac users to use it straight out of the box. You can always reformat the drive to HFS+ or FAT32 if you wish.

Key specs:

Connectivity 1x USB 3.0

Rotational Speed 5,400rpm

Max Write Speed  119MB/s

Dimensions  114 x 76 x 12mm

Weight  159g

Compatibility Mac and Windows

G-Technology G-Drive 4TB

Price: £280

Website: www.g-technology.com

This is essentially the bigger, desktop-orientated brother of the G-Drive Mini on the facing page and is designed for creative professionals in need of an ultra-high capacity drive with lightning-fast transfer speeds. Like its smaller sibling, the G-Drive is encased in brushed aluminium and is formatted with the HFS+ file system for out-of-the-box use with Macs and full compatibility with Apple’s Time Machine backup software. Internally, it sports a 4TB HDD that rotates at 7,200rpm, enabling read/write speeds of up to 165MB/s – more than enough zip to keep the most demanding power users happy.

Key specs:

Connectivity 2x USB 3.0 / 1x Firewire 800

Rotational Speed 7,200rpm

Max Read Speed 165MB/s

Dimensions 235 x 13 x 46mm

Weight 1.4kg

Compatibility Mac and Windows

Western Digital My Cloud  4TB

Price: £150

Website: www.wdc.com/en

This stylish NAS drive enables you to create your own cloud-based storage service from the security of your own home. You’ll also benefit from much more storage without incurring monthly charges. In fact, you’ll save money in the long run – My Cloud costs about the same as a 12-month unlimited subscription plan from Dropbox! And uploading files to a local drive on your home network is much quicker than uploading them over the internet. Note, though, that the drive needs to be positioned within a cable’s length of your broadband router in order to connect to your home network.

Key specs:

Connectivity 1x USB 3.0 / Gigabit Ethernet

Rotational Speed n/a

Max Write Speed 50MB/s (over network)

Dimensions 170 x 49 x 139mm

Weight 960g

Compatibility Mac and Windows

Seagate Personal Cloud 4TB

Price: £160

Website: www.seagate.com

The Personal Cloud NAS drive needs to be next to your router in order to connect the gigabit ethernet cable, and then you’ll be able to back up files and access stored content over your home wireless network. Away from home you can access the drive via the internet simply by using your password. It also offers full tablet/smartphone functionality via the Seagate Media app and can also stream content directly to compatible Smart TVs. The drive is pretty easy to install and operate, and there’s also a ‘2-Bay’ version that comes with an extra set of drives for mirroring data to two drives for added security.

Key specs:

Connectivity Gigabit Ethernet / Wireless / 1x USB 3.0 / 1x USB 2.0

Rotational Speed n/a

Max Read Speed 85MB/s

Dimensions 48x235x119mm

Weight 1.15kg

Compatibility Mac and Windows

LaCie Porsche Design Desktop 4TB

Price: £150

Website: www.lacie.com/uk 

With its 5mm-thick aluminium casing and HFS+ formatting this stylish desktop drive is primarily designed for Mac users. It offers out-of-the-box compatibility with Apple’s built-in Time Machine backup software, although Windows users can of course reformat the drive to NTFS or FAT32. Once up and running you can use the bundled Intego Backup software to schedule your back-ups, and the Public-Private software to create private partitions on the drive for your most important files. LaCie also offers a ‘Porsche Design Mobile’ version that draws power from its USB connection.

Key specs:

Connectivity 1x USB 3.0

Rotational Speed 5,400rpm

Max Read Speed 110MB/s

Dimensions 120 x 190 x 38mm

Weight 1kg

Compatibility Mac and Windows

Buffalo DriveStation Duo 4TB

Price: £290

Website: www.buffalo-technology.com

This high-capacity desktop drive comes with the full Buffalo Tools suite of backup software, including the TurboPC and TurboCopy applications, to enhance transfer speed performance. You also get Buffalo’s NovaBACKUP application that can back up the contents of up to ten Windows PCs and one server – making the DriveStation Duo ideal for home offices and small businesses. For Mac users there’s support for Time Machine. And the big selling point is RAID1 capability, enabling you to automatically mirror the same files on two separate drives inside the unit – doubling your data’s safety.

Key specs:

Connectivity 1x USB 3.0

Rotational Speed 7,200rpm

Max Read Speed 225MB/s

Dimensions 86 x 127 x 204mm

Weight 2kg

Compatibility Mac and Windows

Drobo 5N

Price: £415

Website: www.drobo.com

If you’re looking for a high-end, business-grade NAS drive, then the Drobo 5N ticks all the boxes. The drive does not come with any drives installed, so you’ll need to buy these separately. But it does come with five bays, each of which can accept a 3.5in HDD or SSD of your choice. Better still, Drobo’s BeyondRAID technology allows you to fill the bays with different brands and capacities of HDD/SSD, then configure/partition them as you wish. Its one gigabit ethernet port attaches to your router. From here file transfers to and from the unit are made over your home network as per a regular NAS drive.

Key specs:

Connectivity Gigabit ethernet

Rotational Speed n/a

Max Write Speed n/a

Dimensions 59 x 73 x 103mm

Weight 3.86kg

Compatibility Mac and Windows