If you really fancy a consumer-oriented drive formatted for Windows (which will usually pre-formatted in the NTFS format), you can use the Disk Utility in macOS to reformat it after you bring it home from the store.

We may earn affiliate commissions from buying links, which help support our testing.

The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro external drive is designed for professional videographers and others who work in the field with Thunderbolt 3-equipped computers (most often Macs).

LaCies two-drive Rugged RAID Shuttle offers the choice of high capacity and fast performance (in striped mode), or of half the capacity with all data mirrored on the second disk.

Its ideal for anyone who works in the field and produces oodles of data.

Offering excellent performance and easy-to-use security, Samsungs credit-card-sized, fingerprint-reading Portable SSD T7 Touch is a versatile external solid-state drive.

The Best Ssd Portable Drive Is

Combining on-point performance and strong encryption, Seagates Backup Plus Ultra Touch portable drive is a great choice for everyday backups and security-first use alike.

Its combination of solid performance, hardware encryption, and useful utilities makes the 5TB WD My Passport a strong contender for everyday backup of sensitive data or storing a massive collection of videos, photos, and documents.

Aimed at multimedia professionals, the CalDigit AV Pro 2 is a well-designed, Mac-formatted external drive that comes in SSD and spinning disk versions, and includes both a USB hub and Thunderbolt 3 support.

Designed for videographers and other creative pros who regularly handle tons of data, the LaCie 2big RAID combines two hot-swappable, high-capacity drives with a variety of settings for maximum flexibility and data protection.

Lexars speedy SL100 Pro external SSD is a useful, affordable bit of storage kit for general users and media pros alike.

If youre shopping for a fast, Mac-matching external SSD that will look just as good in the boardroom as it will on the side of a mountain, the Envoy Pro EX With USB-C is the drive for you.

The sleek, expensive Samsung Portable SSD X5 offers the fastest single-drive external storage money can buy, but its suited mainly to well-heeled content-creation pros using late-model Macs.

Most of the current models that use the Apple-friendly interface are designed for photographers and video editors who need to store mountains of footage and access it very quickly.

As a result, they are typically external SSDs, or multidrive RAID arrays, which means theyre also very expensive.

So whats a Mac user to do who just wants to back up his or her files using Time Machine, or stash a large video collection Read on as we solve this and all of your other Mac external-storage quandaries.

File System Considerations Before we get to Thunderbolt 3, we need to address a basic building block of hard drives that has always affected compatibility, and probably always will: the file system.

An external drives file system is the most important factor that determines whether or not its readable by Macs, PCs, or both.

The Best Ssd Mac OS Extended File

With the release of the macOS High Sierra operating system, Cupertino ditched its venerable Mac OS Extended file system, commonly abbreviated as HFS, and switched to an entirely new file format.

Its simply called the Apple File System (APFS), and its the first format to be used across both Macs and iOS devices.

Any drive formatted with HFS will work just fine with a Mac thats running macOS High Sierra or later.

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 wont get the security and efficiency of APFS, but you will get the convenience of being able to transfer files back and forth between Windows and macOS simply by plugging in and unplugging your drive.

Of course, you can easily reformat most external drives, so youre not limited to buying only those intended for use with Macs.

The Best Ssd For Mac