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Top 10 Best External Hard Disk Brands

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 that 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. We have come up with the top 10 best external hard disk brands that are reliable and are a must-try.

10. ioSafe

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There are many hard disk brands in the market that 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 well 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.

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Buffalo Inc. is a subsidiary of Melco Holdings located in Japan. They initially started as an audio equipment manufacturer and have 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

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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

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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 that 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

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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

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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

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Sony is known for its quality and reliable electronic devices in the world. They are a leading manufacturer of electronic products like TVs, computer 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

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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

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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)

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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.

Hitachi is known for its reliable external hard disks. In 2012, Western Digital acquired the Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $3.9 billion in cash. Additionally, 25 million shares of WD common stock valued at approximately $0.9 billion. HGST now produces external hard disks with the brand name Touro.

Vinod Suthersan is an young tech enthusiast, Blogger addict, Internet craze and thriving to learn new things on the world of Internet.