While auxiliary storage and transport are great reasons to buy an external drive — backup is the primary reason ... It’s the best way to safeguard your data against both computer failure ...

The top external SSDs and hard drives are essential tools for PC and Mac users. With file sizes constantly growing—whether it’s photos, movies, apps, or games—having ample storage is more ...

Also: Best cloud storage services of 2025 The solution is an external hard drive to relieve the strain of your computer's limited storage space and secure your data against calamity. Prepare for ...

And, of course, you should always have an external drive available for making Time Machine backups in case anything ever goes wrong. Modern solid-state drives (SSD) are the best option as they ...

While it's still one of the best ways to back up Windows to an external hard drive, the downside is that it's extremely outdated, and Microsoft could remove it from Windows at any time.

These top-rated backup services make it easy to create online and local copies of important files so you can retrieve them if disaster strikes.

Laptop drive almost full? Need to back up your photos? Desktop-size and portable platter storage has never been cheaper. Our deep-dive reviews help you track down the right external hard drive.

The best external hard drive boosts your device's storage space while delivering faster read/write speeds. We've run the benchmarks, and these are my top recommendations. Through extensive testing ...

If you want to take things a step further though, you can combine cloud backup and cloud storage with one of the best external hard drives for local storage in order to adhere to the 3-2-1 backup ...

Through extensive tests, we've benchmarked the best external hard drives for Mac - and these ... but it's an impressive Mac device that makes back-up and transfer quick and seamless.

Looking to expand the storage of your computer? CNET's top picks of the best external hard drives and SSDs are worth your cash. Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's ...