Compare the Best External Hard DrivesOctober 2020

External hard drives are portable and used to backup files and data from your computer, so they’re safeguarded in case of accident or for retrieval at a later date. While Cloud-based backups are being used more and more for backups, external hard drives still have several important benefits compared to online backups:

Extras

Finally, there are a wealth of extras that can be found in more advanced models of external hard drives. Some of these may only be useful in specific situations, and you will usually pay more for them, but the utility may well be worth the extra cost. Some examples of extra features include:

External Hard Drive Prices

In total we found 416 external hard drives ranging from £29 to £862. A new external hard drive costs on average £163 and 80% of external hard disk are priced between £49 and £341. The cheapest external hard drive that we found is the Toshiba Canvio Basics - 500Gb at only £30, and the most expensive is the Apricorn Aegis Padlock DT - 10TB at £862.

External Hard Drive Brands - Price Range

The average price of ioSafe external hard disks is £512 which is the highest average price of all external hard drive brands. ioSafe external hard disks range in price from £335 to £858.

The average price of Apricorn external hard disk is £378 which is the second highest average price of all external hard drive brands. Apricorn external hard disk range in price from £113 to £862.

The third highest average external hard drive price out of all brands is Glyph external hard disks with an average price of £356. Glyph external hard disks range in price from £136 to £567.

External Hard Drive Brands - Average Ratings

We have evaluated 13 expert reviews and 849 user reviews for external hard disk drives and used this information to evaluate the average rating for each brand of external hard drive. The top three external hard drive brands are Western Digital, Buffalo and iStorage. Western Digital has an average rating of 91%, Buffalo has an average rating of 75% and iStorage has an average rating of 72%.

Biggest External Hard Drive Retailers

We found 332 current offers for external hard drives from Quzo making it the biggest external hard drive retailer. That is more than twice as big as the second biggest retailer, SmartTeck for whom we found 159 current offers for external hard drives. The third biggest retailer is Ebuyer Business with 72 current external hard drive offers.

When Are Most New External Hard Disk Released?

June to July is the most common period for new external hard drives to be released in. The biggest month in 2019 for new external hard drive releases was July, with seven new external hard drives released that month. 59 new external hard drives were released in June 2018 making it the biggest month that year for new external hard drive releases. In 2017 most new external harddisks were released in April, with 28 new external harddisks released that month.

Weights

'Weight' denotes the weight of the external hard drive, measured in grams (g).

Across the range of external hard disks, the weights range from 41g to 11.4kg. The weights of most external hard drives range from 0g to 300g. The external hard drive with the heaviest weight is the ioSafe Solo G3 - 4Tb, which is a 6.8kg external hard drive and currently retails for £449.00. The Integral USB 3.0 Portable SSD External Hard Drive - 256GB, which sells for £108.99, has the lightest weight and is a 41g external hard drive.

USB Powered

Whether the hard drive is powered by USB or not.

The vast majority of the 818 new external hard drives currently listed on Kagoo are USB powered external hard disks. 674 external hard drives (82%) are USB powered external hard disks.

Hard Drive Capacities

'Hard Drive Capacity' denotes how much data the hard drive can hold, measured in gigabytes (GB).

Comparing all external hard drives, the hard drive capacities range from 1GB to 64TB. The hard drive capacities of most external hard drives range from 0GB to 1.5TB. The external hard drive with the biggest hard drive capacity is the Western Digital My Book Duo - 16Tb, which is a 16TB external hard drive and currently retails for £552.59. The Western Digital WD My Passport Wireless - 2TB, which can be purchased for £160.32, has the smallest hard drive capacity and is a 1GB external hard drive.

Which Are the Cheapest Retailers for External Harddisk?

The chart below helps you decide which retailer is normally cheapest for buying external hard disk. For each retailer it shows the total number of external hard disk where they currently have a market leading price. The chart below helps you decide which retailer is normally cheapest for buying external hard drive. For each retailer we took all of their prices and looked at what proportion of those prices where the cheapest on the market. The cheapest retailer that we found was SmartTeck. 54 of their external hard drive prices were the cheapest that could be found anywhere.

Proportion of External Hard Disk Drive for Which Each Retailer is Cheapest?

Assessing how cheap each retailer is for external hard disk drives by counting the number of cheapest prices for that retailer, makes the retailers that offer the greatest number of external hard drive prices more likely to offer the greatest number of cheapest prices. The chart below considers the proportion of each retailer's external hard drive prices that are the cheapest compared to other retailers. The cheapest retailer that we found using this approach was SmartTeck. 34% of their external hard drive prices were the cheapest that could be found anywhere.