Compare the Best External Hard DrivesAugust 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 419 external hard disk drives ranging from £29 to £883. A new external hard drive costs on average £150 and 80% of external hard disk drives are priced between £49 and £304. The Western Digital WD My Book Pro - 16Tb is the most expensive external hard drive that we found at £883, and the Toshiba Canvio Basics - 500Gb is the cheapest at only £30.

External Hard Drive Brands - Price Range

The average price of ioSafe external hard drive is £542 which is the highest average price of all external hard drive brands. ioSafe external hard drive start at £335 and their most expensive external hard drive costs £850.

The second highest average external hard drive price out of all brands is Digittrade external hard disks with an average price of £459. Digittrade external hard disks range in price from £124 to £771.

Glyph external hard disks start at £117 and their most expensive external hard drive costs £566. The average price of Glyph external hard disks is £342 which is the third highest average price of all external hard drive brands.

External Hard Drive Brands - Average Ratings

We have checked 139 expert reviews and 1,558 user reviews for external hard disks and used this information to evaluate the average rating for each brand of external hard drive. The top rated external hard drive brand is Western Digital with an average rating of 90%. The second best brand is Seagate with 83% and the third best brand is Buffalo with 75%.

Biggest External Hard Drive Retailers

The biggest external hard drive retailer by number of products currently for sale is Quzo. We found 317 current external hard drive offers from Quzo. The second biggest retailer is Amazon UK with 226 offers. That means Quzo is significantly bigger than Amazon UK when it comes to external harddisks. SmartTeck is the third biggest retailer with 138 current offers.

When Are Most New External Hard Disks Released?

The most common period for new external hard drives to be released in is between June and July. That means that most of the latest external hard drive technology was released in within the last 3 months, and now is good time to buy. The biggest month last year for new external hard drive releases was July, with seven new external hard disk drive released that month. In 2018 most new external hard disk drive were released in June, with 59 new external hard disk drive released that month. April was the biggest month in 2017 for new external hard drives, with 28 new external hard drives released that month.

Weights

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

Across the range of external hard drives, the weights range from 41g to 11.4kg. The weights of the majority of external hard drives range from 0g to 300g. The ioSafe SoloPRO - 3Tb, which can be purchased for £610.52, has the heaviest weight and is a 6.8kg external hard drive. The external hard drive with the lightest weight is the Integral USB 3.0 Portable SSD External Hard Drive - 256GB, which is a 41g external hard drive and is priced at £108.99.

USB Powered

Whether the hard drive is powered by USB or not.

Of the 804 new external hard disk drives currently listed on Kagoo, the vast majority are USB powered external harddisk. 666 external hard disk drives (83%) are USB powered external harddisk.

Hard Drive Capacities

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

Comparing all external hard disks, the hard drive capacities range from 1GB to 64TB. The hard drive capacities of most external harddisks range from 0GB to 1.5TB. The Western Digital My Book Duo - 20Tb, which is on sale for £624.01, has the biggest hard drive capacity and is a 20TB external hard drive. The external hard drive with the smallest hard drive capacity is the Western Digital WD My Passport Wireless - 1TB, which is a 1GB external hard drive and can be purchased for £131.24.

Which Are the Cheapest Retailers for External Hard Disks?

The chart below helps you decide which retailer is normally cheapest for buying external hard drives. For each retailer it shows the total number of external hard drives where they currently have a market leading price. The chart below helps you decide which retailer is normally cheapest for buying external hard disk. 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 Amazon UK. 102 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 drive 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 Amazon UK. 45.1% of their external hard drive prices were the cheapest that could be found anywhere.