Some manufacturers offer optional external cases to protect their drives.

Oddly enough, despite being an Intel technology, Thunderbolt ports are rare on the PC front-especially on laptops. Thunderbolt is the fastest hard-drive interface, and it’s very popular on the Mac platform.

It’s ubiquitous on new PCs, and it’s backward-compatible with USB 2.0 on older models. Interface USB 3.0 is the ideal portable hard-drive interface for PC users. SSDs aren’t impervious to shocks, but they don’t have any moving parts. Media A platter-based portable hard drive will typically deliver more capacity at a lower cost-per-gigabyte than one based on a solid-state drive, but it will also be slower and more susceptible to damage if it’s dropped. If the drive you want is available formatted only HTFS+, you’ll need to take the time to reformat it. Macs use the HTFS+ file system, so manufacturers sometimes offer a different SKU for each platform (or they might provide a pre-loaded NTFS driver for Mac users). Platform If you’re buying a portable hard drive for a PC, buy one that’s pre-formatted NTFS. Seagate’s Backup Plus Fast is a great choice for making backups. SSDs perform at a much higher level than mechanical drives, but they’re also considerably more expensive.

Best external hard drives for mac cnet