Top 5 1TB and 2TB external hard drives
Top 5 1TB and 2TB external hard drives
Sometimes it’s true – size does matter. Where some people can get away with a regular, run-of-the-mill size external hard drive – say 500GB or less – some need more. A lot more. You might just have a whole heap of high resolution photos, or a mega HD movie collection. Or you’re looking to back up a significant amount of data across a number of laptops, computers, and other drives. Or it could be that you need to run some memory sapping graphics rendering or video editing software and your laptop just won’t be able to handle it. Whatever the case, you need to think BIG. When it comes to external hard drives, big means 1TB and upwards. The drives I’ll focus on in this post will be mainly 1 – 2TB, but you can get some real monster drives out there if you really think you’ll need them!
A couple of key things to note:
- the bigger the capacity, the greater the need for power to drive it, so these supersized models need external power rather than USB to run, which means that anything 2TB or over will be desk-based type drive. There are some decent portable 1TB models around, a couple of which are covered below
- some large drives come pre-formatted in FAT32 – which in English means that they will only receive maximum file transfers of 4GB, not ideal for the types of drive we’re talking about here! Your best approach would be to reformat the drive to the NTFS file system, enabling transfer of much larger files (see here for How-To Geek guide…)
- for safety’s sake, you may want to consider a combination of drives (e.g. 2 x 2TB drives rather than a 4TB one) to make sure you have multiple copies of your files. 2TB of data is a lot (equivalent to 2,500 movies, 250,000 songs or 650,000 photos), and the last thing you want to do is risk losing everything without recourse to another backup
With all this in mind, the below external hard drives really stand out from the crowd:
WD My Passport Essential SE 1 TB Portable Hard Drive (USB 3.0/2.0): 
I have reviewed this drive elsewhere (see Best for… Value for Money), but it really does deserve another brief mention here, as it really stands out as a high performing external hard drive. For its capacity, this 1TB size model is extremely portable, easy to set up and use and sports phenomenal transfer speeds when used in USB 3.0 mode. It does come with pre-loaded Western Digital software, but you don’t have to use it, and can simply be used as a drag and drop drive instead. Currently a bargain on amazon.co.uk at over 40% off (approx. £100)! Read more >>>
Freecom 56067 2TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive Quattro:
This drive from Freecom supports 4 connection types -hence Quattro presumably – namely FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 3.0 and eSATA (and is also backward compatible with USB 2.0). For it’s capacity, it’s really not that big, and will sit fairly innocuously on your desk, but does need external power to run (comes with the drive). Cleverly, the Quattro has been designed in such a way as to do away with the cooling fan, with heat absorbed through its aluminium frame instead, which is a neat solution and means the drive is silent (no annoying whirring sound…). The model below is the 2TB one, but also comes as 1TB or 3TB as well. Read more >>>
Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB External Hard Drive:
This drive from Western Digital is truly one of the best desktop external hard drives available today specifically designed for Mac users in mind (it will work for PCs as well but comes pre-formatted for Macs). It gets a 5 star rating for its huge 2TB memory, super fast FireWire 800 data transfer, ease of installation, great looks and bargain price (currently 40% off RRP on amazon). All in all a great buy for all Mac users looking for extra storage. Read more >>>
Buffalo DriveStation 2.0TB USB 2.0 External Hard Disk Drive:
Retailing at around £100 at time of review, this drive from Buffalo is probably best described as a solid midfielder, not going to get much in the way of goals, but plays a vital role for the team. Included here as a highly rated external hard drive that provides great value for money. Does the job it’s there for, is plug and play out of the box and doesn’t make a lot of noise. Solid. Read more >>>
LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive 2TB:
We know that LaCie are big into their design collaborations (see Best for… Style for the collaboratively designed portable external hard drive), and this drive is no exception. Based on size and weight, it’s definitely a desktop drive, and has a clever touch sensitive surface which launches the bundled Lacie back-up software or a backup program of your own choosing depending on whether you use a short tap or long touch. Plus you can get it in this 2TB version and in a 1TB version as well. Read more>>>
Tagged: Buffalo DriveStation 2.0TB USB 2.0 External Hard Disk Drive, featured, Freecom 56067 2TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive Quattro, LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive 2TB, WD My Passport Essential SE, Western Digital 2.0TB USB 2.0 MyBook Studio E
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