You see it in everything from phones to laptops. USB-C is the latest of the USB connectors the world is coalescing around. For comparison, a slower 1TB Samsung T5 on USB is only $125.
Still, if you want the most performance, you can get it in drives such as our recommended portable, the Samsung Portable SSD X5, which is $200 for 500GB of capacity. Thunderbolt 3 and the newer Thunderbolt 4 typically are the highest-performing interfaces for external storage, with the key limitation being a premium price and a general lack of compatibility with the far more popular USB 3.2 ports in the world. Although faster than the typical USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 10Gbps, there aren’t a lot of USB 20Gbps gen 2×2 ports out there, but these drives should work with the upcoming USB4 at the same 20Gbps pace. The faster USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 20Gbps (Gen 2×2) moves you into a higher-price bracket, with the Seagate Firecuda Gaming SSD costing $200 for the same 500GB of storage. A SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD, our runner-up for portable storage, can be had for $90 in a 500GB capacity. The good news is that while USB 3.1 Gen 2, which is more than fast enough for most users at 10Gbps, used to be expensive, it’s basically the standard today. Where SuperSpeed 10Gbps/20Gbps, USB4, or Thunderbolt will definitely help is with the aforementioned RAID hard drive setups, or more likely-an SSD. Don’t worry about Gen 2, 10Gbps, or Thunderbolt with single hard drive enclosures because it doesn’t really matter. No hard drive, unless combined in RAID with others, can outstrip the 5Gbps (roughly 500MBps real-world after overhead) throughput of USB 3.1 Gen 1. For the sake of brevity (and sanity), we generally shorten those names to USB 10Gbps, or 10Gbps USB, for instance. In an attempt to simplify things, the USB Forum has recently changed the nomenclature to indicate throughput speed-SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps, SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps, and SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps-because performance is a priority for most uses. Beyond that simple statement, the story gets confusing-largely because of the plethora of variations: USB 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5Gbps, which is basically USB 3.0), USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps), and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps), and now the up-and-coming USB4. The vast majority of external drives today are USB drives. The worst value for an external hard drive is typically the lowest-capacity drive. Having more storage allows you to keep more historical files should you need them or use the same drive to backup additional PCs.
If you have 1TB of storage in your PC, 2TB will allow you to make a full backup while keeping historical backups on the same drive. So how much do you need? We recommend a backup drive at least twice as large as the total capacity of your PC. The best “value” are typically for the largest hard drives as you can see, but it brings considerably higher prices and not everyone needs that much capacity. It’s almost equally as bad on the WD Elements Portable drive. You’re paying more than twice as much for the lowest-capacity drive versus the next step up. You can see that below where we compare the popular WD Elements desktop hard drive’s available capacities and prices. We’ve been doing this comparison for years and it’s always been the worst value. In fact, dollar for dollar, cheaper low-capacity drives are most often the worst deal historically.
However, while you might think that the lowest-cost drive provides the most value, it often doesn’t. Capacity and priceįor most consumers, the main shopping concerns for external storage are capacity and price. Yes, USB4 will provide the same massive throughput as Thunderbolt 3 at lower prices eventually, and likely far more products too.