Top 10 Best External Hard Disk Brands

TOP 10 BEST EXTERNAL
HARD DISK BRANDS

Created By: Jenny Stapler

■ External portable hard disks have become a part of our life to handle those huge
amounts of data we come across daily. The external storage technology has
increased to a tremendous amount by enabling us to store, transfer and manage
GBs and TBs of data easily.

■ External portable hard disks come handy when you want to back up your large
chunks of data (movies, music, videos, and other important files) and transfer to
another system.

■ There are many brands who manufacture external hard disks for a good value for
money, but from the customer point of view, an external hard disk has to be reliable
and durable. In today’s post, we are going to list the top 10 best external hard disk
brands which are reliable and is a must try.

10. ioSafe

There are many hard disk brands in the market
which aren’t popular. One such company is ioSafe.
ioSafe is a company which is known for its disaster
protected hard drives, founded in the year 2004.
Though, a recently new company in the hard disk
sector, it has come up highly well and is performing
extremely good in the segment. ioSafe’s storage
systems are optimized for heat from the fire and
complete submersion in fresh or saltwater with the
ability to recover data located on the disk drive
inside.
This company in 2012 produced the world’s first
disaster-proof rugged portable hard drives. The
ioSafe Rugged Portable is one of the world’s finest
external hard disk to store your data as it protects
your data from extreme weather conditions.

9. Buffalo Inc.

■ Buffalo Inc. is a subsidiary of Melco Holdings
located in Japan. They initially started as an
audio equipment manufacturer and has now
entered computer peripherals. Buffalo Inc.
produces high quality external hard disks and
storage drives.

■ Buffalo’s external hard drives are shock
resistance and are highly durable. Buffalo
Technologies produces its external hard disks
with the brand name MiniStation.

■ The current portable hard disk models are
MiniStation Thunderbolt, MiniStation Air,
MiniStation DDR, MiniStation extreme and
MiniStation with capacity from 500GB to 2TB.

■ They give a manufacturer warranty of 3 years
for most of its high-end external storage
devices.

8. LG

■ In 2010, LG was the second largest producer
of Televisions in the world. LG is known for its
reliable electronic products such as
refrigerators, televisions and mobile phones.

■ Though, LG is relatively new to the external
HDD and storage industry but has the capacity
to win the battle with its superior electronic
manufacturing technologies and skilled
manpower.

■ LG is also known to produce innovative, new
and creative electronic products.

■ Even in the external hard disk arena, LG has
produced few ultra-thin external portable
drives such as XD-7(Ultra-thin external hard
drive), XD-7 USB 3.0(USB 3.0 ultra-thin
external hard drive) and the XD-5 (Mini
external hard drive).

7. ADATA

■ In 2007, ADATA was the 3rd largest
DRAM manufacturer in the world with a
market share of 7.6% and the world’s 4th
largest Flash-product manufacturer.

■ ADATA is a memory and storage device
manufacturer from Taiwan. The company
creates colorful, durable and stylish
external hard drives which are
categorized into 4 categories and they
are elite, choice, durable and classic.

■ Each group has few models, for example,
the durable group has models such as
HD650 and HD710 which are waterproof
and shockproof.

■ The hard drives are custom tailored with
unique silicone material, military-grade
shockproof and waterproof construction.

6. Apple

■ Apple is a company proudly known for its
quality and long durability of its products
especially the Apple iPhones.

■ If you are an Apple Mac owner, then you
should definitely go for Apple’s external
storage devices rather than other brands
out in the market.

■ An Apple storage device has great
durability and goes fine with your Mac
device. AirPort Time Capsule is the name
of the portable storage hard drives
created by Apple and comes in two
variations of 2TB and 3TB.

5. Transcend

■ Transcend is one of the leading and famous
manufacturers of storage devices from
Taiwan.

■ They are the world’s third largest producer of
flash drives. Similar to pen drives, Transcend
has a history of reliable external hard disks.

■ The models currently manufactured by
Transcend for PC are StoreJet 25M3 (USB
3.0), StoreJet 25M2 (USB 2.0), StoreJet
25H3 (USB 3.0), StoreJet 25H2 (USB 2.0),
StoreJet 25A3 (USB 3.0), StoreJet 25D3
(USB 3.0), StoreJet 25D2 (USB 2.0),
StoreJet 25S3 (USB 3.0 Enclosure) and
ESD400 Portable SSD (USB 3.0).

■ There are three other variations of external
portable drives for Mac.

4. Sony

■ Sony is known for its quality and reliable
electronic devices in the world. They are a
leading manufacturer of electronic products
like TVs, computers hardware, video games,
and semiconductor devices.

■ Though Sony is not a leading producer in the
hard disk segment, Sony has come out good
in terms of reliability and durability.

■ Current Sony portable hard disk products are
HD-SG5/B, HD-EG5/B, HD-E2/L, and HD-
E1/B. Sony produces capacity ranging from
500GB to 2TB. Sony external hard disk with
USB 3.0 supports up to a speed of 5GBps.

3. Toshiba

■ Toshiba is a leading Japanese
electronic and electrical device
manufacturer.

■ They are the 4th largest in terms of
revenue from the manufacture of the
semiconductor. In 2009, Toshiba
acquired the HDD business of Fujitsu.

■ The Toshiba external hard disks
models are Canvio® Connect, Canvio®
Basics 3.0 and Canvio® Slim with
sizes ranging from 500GB to 2TB.

2. Seagate

■ Seagate is an American storage manufacturer. They are one of the leading external
hard disk brands along with Western Digital. Seagate has produced many variations of
external portable hard disks and is known to give the latest in storage technology.

■ The drives of Seagates are known for their high performance and sleek designs.
Seagate external hard disks have a capacity ranging from 500GB to 4TB.

■ The models produced by Seagate currently are Backup Plus Fast Portable Drive, Backup
Plus Slim Portable Drive, Sevenᵐᵐ Portable Drive, Wireless Plus Mobile Storage,
Wireless Mobile Storage, Backup Plus Fast SSD Portable Drive, Backup Plus Fast SSD
Portable Drive, Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive for Mac and Expansion Portable Hard
Drive.

1. WD (Western Digital Company) & HGST
(formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies)

■ Western Digital Company is a reputable
and reliable brand manufacturing portable
external hard disks and storage devices.

■ No external hard disk brands in the world
are able to compete with the
manufacturing output provided by WD.

■ WD is one of the largest manufacturers of
hard disks in the world. As we write this
post, Western Digital has three portable
hard disks – WD Elements Portable, My
Passport Ultra, and My Passport Ultra
Metal.

■ WD manufactures external hard disks for
both PC and Mac. It comes in variations of
500 GB, 1TB and 2TB. The external
portable hard disks have features such as
USB 3.0, cloud backup and password
encryption.

Thank You!