A fast external drive is important as it saves you time as you transfer those large files from one computer to another. Since mechanical hard drives are not likely to get faster for three to four years from now, the best performance hard drives in terms of speed available in the market are likely to serve you well in the next three to four years. Therefore, we took the liberty to present to you a faceoff between the portable hard drives in the market.
You have run out of storage space in your PC or phone and you are looking for space to store those photos, music and large files. Portable hard drives come in handy in such situations, while reliability and storage space are key, speed and transfer time are also important attributes to look for in an external hard drive. You can be sure that whichever one of these hard drives you choose, it will be your best performance bet for the next few years.

1. Western Digital My Passport

You don’t need to break the bank to buy this drive. It comes in sizes of 1, 2, 3 and 4 TB. It is the best performer in terms of data speeds. Its fast performance rivals many other expensive competitors. The disk will allow a transfer speed of 174 MBps on the maximum and if you need to write the maximum speed it offers is 168 MBps. Using the Type C USB the drive will transfer data at 515MB/s speed. It is also light and small with a size like that of a passport. For faster transfers this is the drive you need.

2. OWC ThurderBay 4 Mini

This drive boasts of its super-fast storage. It comes in capacities of 1TB, 2tb, 4 TB and 8 TB. The two thunderBay ports allow it to have high write and read speeds. The 294 MB/s write speeds and 841MB/s when reading files shows that this disk performance does not disappoint. You can edit your files on the ThurdeyBay mini hard drives smoothly and quickly just as if the files were located in your PC internal drives. However, this drive does not come cheap it costs more than $28k and it is suitable for those who need to store lots of data and access it fast.

3. Samsung Portable SSD T3

If speed is you main priority then this drive is a good choice. It has a large capacity to store up your music, photos and videos. The transfer speed of the drive is up to 450MB/s according to the manufacturer. The drive also maintains the speed when transferring a large number of small sized files.

4. Adatya SD700 External SSD

The solid state drive that is part of the external drive of the Adata allows the drive to be much faster than those drives using traditional spinning drives. The drive also has a rugged storage device that provides ample space at a cheaper price. When you buy this drive, you get a drive that has faster transfer speed and a rugged protection. The read and write transfer speeds can hit up to 433 MBps and 427 MBps. It has a pocket size and it’s worth its price in case you are looking for the fastest portable hard drive. It comes in 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB capacities.

5. Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive 5tb

This drive is the ultimate solution for your capacity and speed needs. The capacities are in different ranges up to 8 TB. The read and write speeds beat the competition by farther read speed reaches at 153MB/s while the write speed is at 152MB/s.
Additionally, you can rest easy knowing that it has a very low failure rate more so if you have a big capacity drive.

6. Toshiba Canvio Connect II

This drive is a brilliantly all rounded package and it comes with high speed. Its weight is just 5 pounds and it will work with your Mac or Windows hardware. It has enough space for your media library, backups and genuine software. The read speeds are 98MB and 103MB for small and medium files respectively. While the write speeds are 112 MBS for both small and medium files. For the large files they read and write at 109 MBS and 112 MBS respectively.