Last Updated: February 14th, 2020
In the age of digital photography, external hard drives have become an essential for backing up our images. This need has driven us to only want to work with the best external hard drives for photographers.
We have been using external hard drives for close to a decade now to store both personal photos we’ve taken of ourselves and professional photos we take for our paying clients. These days, we are shooting thousands of images each week as we travel, take portraits, and photograph weddings and other events – so having the support of the greatest and best external hard drives is really an invaluable part of our workflow.
External HD’s play an important role in the digital photography workflow – and you will want to consider different options available to you depending on your specific needs. For example, we wouldn’t want to cart our giant 10TB solid state hard drive in our suitcase to travel half-way across the world – there are better solutions for that.
At the end of the day, when we are in the comfort of our own homes, having a reliable backup is critical.
The Horror of Bad Hard Drives (A Serious Warning!)
One of the scariest things in the life of a photographer is the thought of losing photos. We don’t know what we would have done if all the time spent capturing beautiful landscape photos in Iceland were suddenly stolen from us. Even worse – we’d probably have a total meltdown if we lost wedding pictures we took for a client who paid us to be there!!
We have been fortunate to never have a total failure of our hard drives – but have read so many horror stories of other photographers losing everything. This is just one example!!
It’s these types of stories that led us to searching out the best HD’s available. Today, we have a number of external hard drives that we are using as library backups and for other purposes such as easy travel backups.
In our pursuit of peace of mind, we’ve let one simple quote guide our decisions when it came to purchasing external hard drives. It is:
“One is none, and two is one.”
In the world of image backups, it’s important to realize that having multiple backups is a good practice.
While we will absolutely only recommend the best hard drives on the market today – based on reputation, reviews, and our personal experiences – no HD is foolproof. Failures do happen to even the best drives – sometimes just as a result of time. Storing photos on multiple drives is really the only way to have full confidence that you will have access to your images forever.
For our own images, we use the following combination to make sure we never lose a picture that we need:
- Keep images on SD cards until completely migrated to appropriate external drives – dual write to 2 SD cards if your camera has this feature for extra peace of mind
- Offload images onto a travel external HD first (if on the road), backup again on a solid state drive at home
- Retain an additional backup just in case on a secondary external HD and/or on your computer’s built in drive (storage space permitting)
- Backup images on a cloud based storage solution like Dropbox. For personal photos, you get totally free cloud storage through Amazon Prime – did you know that? If you don’t have Amazon Prime, sign up today for a free trial!
This may seem like overkill – but it’s a good practice we’ve learned through being professional photographers.
Of course, you may have images that you don’t care so much about – so it may not be necessary to go to these great lengths for every shot (or collection of images), but it is a good idea for the ones you value most.
Overview: The Best External Hard Drives for Photographers
There are 3 primary categories of external hard drives as it relates to photographers wanting effective backups depending on your specific workflow needs. These categories break down like this:
Category #1: Traveling Hard Drives
Like we mentioned earlier in this post, we do a lot of traveling. We will often photograph weddings that require us to drive hours away and stay overnight. At times, we’ve also traveled out of the country with all of our photography equipment – taking portraits and landscapes in these far off locations.
All of this traveling is absolutely amazing, but for sure – we never want to feel like we’ll end up just losing all of our work before we get home.
Requirements: External hard drives for travel need to be small and compact, require low levels of energy to operate, and need to be durable to live through life on the road or air.
Category #2: Backup Hard Drives
Most photographers wanting an external hard drive will want one in this category. While all external HD’s are meant to back up images – our selection of drives under this category are meant for long term storage of files for most photography uses.
Requirements: External hard drives to be used as image backups should be highly reliable, portable, come equipped with a good amount of storage, and be compatible with automated backup software like Time Machine.
Category #3: Internal Hard Drive Extensions
These are specialized external hard drives for professional photographers or hobbyists shooting large volumes of images. Technology on these types of drives has advanced significantly over the past few years with the introduction of faster connection technologies such as USB 3.0, Firewire, and Thunderbolt.
Requirements: External hard drives meant to remain in a static location and function as an extension of a desktop computer’s HD storage system. These should be extremely reliable, heavy duty and durable, and be able to store a large capacity of files (10TB+). This is functionally going to be best for photographers taking really large volumes of RAW file format images and needing to back them all up in a single location.
Summary: Our Recommended Best External Hard Drives for Photographers
Below is a consolidated list of all the external hard drives we will be discussing throughout the remainder of this post.
Please note, these links will take you to Amazon where you can see more information such as price, user reviews, etc. Any purchases made through these links go to supporting Formed From Light and the future of our blog.
- LaCie Rugged Mini 1TB Portable External Hard Drive
- WD 1TB My Passport SSD Portable Storage
- Western Digital 2TB Black My Passport Portable External Hard Drive
- Western Digital 2TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable External Hard Drive
- Western Digital 4TB Black My Passport Portable External Hard Drive
- Western Digital 6TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive
- Fantom Drives 4TB External Hard Drive
- Seagate Desktop 8TB External Hard Drive
- LaCie D2 10TB External Hard Drive
- G-Technology G-DRIVE 10TB External Hard Drive
The Best External Traveling Hard Drives
LaCie Rugged Mini 1TB Portable External Hard Drive
- 2TB Storage Capacity
- USB 3.0 Interface; USB 2.0 Compatible
- 5400 rpm Speed
- Transfer Rate Up to 5Gb/s
- 47.2″ Maximum Drop Height
- LaCie Private-Public Software
- Dimensions: 5.3 x 3.4 x 0.7″
- Weight: 0.5 lbs / 0.2 kg
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
If any external hard drives scream that they were developed for people on the move, it’s the LaCie Rugged series. This HD is water resistant, drop resistant (up to 4 feet), and crush resistant (up to a 1 ton car driving over it!). This is an excellent solution for a traveling photographer.
This external hard drive is also available in 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB sizes.
WD 1TB My Passport SSD Portable Storage
- 1TB Storage Capacity
- USB 3.1 Type-C Connector
- Up to 515 MB/s Data Transfer Rate
- Bus Powered
- Shock Resistant up to 6.5′
- Dimensions: 3.5 x 1.8 x 0.4″
- Weight: 1.4 oz / 40 g
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
We have had great luck with Western Digital external hard drive products, and this portable SSD is no exception.
The main reason this fits into our list of recommended external HD’s for traveling photographers is because it is solid state. Most products in this price range and for this purpose use spinning disk drives, which while good, have a higher failure rate due to this design.
You will notice the cost of this 1TB drive is a little more expensive than some other options available on this list that would include more storage, so you will need to weigh the pros and cons against your personal needs.
Western Digital 2TB Black My Passport Portable External Hard Drive
- 2TB Storage Capacity
- USB 3.0 Interface; USB 2.0 Compatible
- Data Protection with Hardware Encryption
- Includes WD Backup Software
- Dimensions: 4.3 x 3.2 x 0.8″
- Weight: 0.54 lbs / 0.24 kg
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
The WD My Passport is one of our favorite external hard drives.
We’ve bought 3 of these over the years – steadily increasing the storage volume as we began to take more and more photographs.
This HD is suitable for both traveling and simply using as a home backup. We have even done photo editing in Lightroom from catalog files right on this disk without issue – so that definitely gives it a leg up in our experience. It’s absolutely a great drive, and quite cheap too!!
The WD My Passport also comes in 3TB and 4TB storage sizes.
Western Digital 2TB My Passport Wireless Pro Portable External Hard Drive
- 2TB Storage Capacity
- Wi-Fi, USB 3.0 Connectivity
- SD Media Card Slot
- Up to 10 Hours of Battery Life
- Charge Mobile Devices
- USB 2.0 Port
- Dimensions: 5.3 x 3.4 x 0.7″
- Weight: 1.0 lb / 0.5 kg
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
This is one of the best portable external hard drives because it includes a built in SD card reader and generates a wireless connection. This makes it possible for you to travel without a laptop, which can save some space in your bags AND bring a little peace of mind to not have to cart a computer around with you. The only downside of this device is that it runs on USB 2.0 technology – meaning it is a bit slower than most other drives on our list. Still, it’s not too detrimental considering the unique value it can offer you.
You can also get this hard drive in 3TB and 4TB editions.
The Best External Backup Hard Drives
Western Digital 4TB Black My Passport Portable External Hard Drive
- 4TB Storage Capacity
- USB 3.0 Interface; USB 2.0 Compatible
- Data Protection with Hardware Encryption
- Includes WD Backup Software
- Dimensions: 4.3 x 3.2 x 0.8″
- Weight: 8.6 ounces
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
If you are wanting an external hard drive that will mostly remain at home, but still needs the lightweight functionality in the event you needed to take it somewhere else with you, the WD My Passport is a great option.
We actually already covered this product in our travel HD section – but wanted to reiterate it’s value for this purpose if you get a model with 4TB or greater of storage. For most photography backups, this amount of storage should last you a good while. We actually have used a 4TB My Passport and, after shooting many weddings and smaller shoots, it lasted around 1 year before being fully loaded with files.
Western Digital 6TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive
- 6TB Storage Capacity
- USB 3.0 Interface
- Includes AC Adapter
- 256-Bit AES Hardware Encryption
- Includes WD Backup Software
- Dimensions: 9.0 x 8.2 x 3.6″
- Weight: 2.9 lb / 1.3 kg
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
This is a great large storage capacity external hard drive. This is the type of backup drive that starts to feel more like a brick, and does require you to plug it into an outlet to activate it. This is a good solution if you plan to just keep it at home in your office and close by to your computer.
Also available in 8TB and 10TB versions.
Fantom Drives 4TB External Hard Drive
- 4TB Storage Capacity
- USB 3.0 Interface
- Includes AC Adapter
- Dimensions: 7.7 x 1.7 x 4.7″
- Weight: 2.4 lb / 1.3 kg
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
The Fantom Drives G-Force 3 series is designed for heavy load users such as photographers, videographers, and video gamers needing a lot of storage space with a high level of performance and reliability. If you can just picture what sort of requirements would be needed to stream a modern video game to a PS4 or Xbox from an external HD, you know this will work for the (comparably lightweight) need of photographers backing up and, potentially, editing images.
This is a great drive recommended for backups. You could also use it as an extension to your internal HD is you buy an upgraded model with more storage such as the 10TB, 12TB, and 14TB options.
Seagate Desktop 8TB External Hard Drive
- 8TB Storage Capacity
- 1 x Micro-USB 3.0 (Micro-B 10-pin) Port
- 2 x USB 3.0 Type-A Ports
- Up to 160 MB/s Data Transfer Speed
- Dimensions: 9.0 x 8.2 x 3.6″
- Weight: 2.3 lb / 1.0 kg
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
Seagate is another external hard drive manufacturer with quality comparable to Western Digital. Both of these brands are often considered “for consumers” and their pricing reflects this – but we’ve never had any issues with either in all the years of heavy use.
Internal Hard Drive Extensions
LaCie d2 10TB External Hard Drive
- External Drive 10TB Drive Capacity
- USB 3.0 / FireWire 800 / eSATA Ports
- Up to 130MB/s Data Transfers via USB 3.0
- Supports FireWire Daisy-Chaining
- Dimensions: 7.8 x 7.4 x 4.0″
- Weight: 2.3 lb / 5.2 lb
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
Lacie external drives are well known in the professional world for their quality and performance. We came into contact with this particular model through a former job as a designer at a corporation. If the world of “big business” can trust this, then so can we. This would serve you well as extension to your computer’s hard drive for sure.
G-Technology G-DRIVE 10TB External Hard Drive
- External Drive 10TB Drive Capacity
- USB 3.0, Thunderbolt
- Data Transfer Rate up to 165 MB/s
- 7200 rpm
- Aluminum Enclosure
- Dimensions: 9.0 x 8.5 x 3.0″
- Weight: 3.25 lb / 1.5 kg
- OS Compatibility: Mac and Windows
- Price: Check the latest price here
Last, but not least, the G-Drive is our current large volume backup drive. While we often use disk drives for smaller backups when we are on the road, this solid state external hard drive remains in our office at all times. This means every wedding and sessions we photograph for our clients get backed up to the most reputable HD currently available. Performance and durability is excellent. This product comes highly recommended from us since we’ve had the chance to see it’s quality first hand in a very serious way.
Conclusion
With so many external hard drives available, it can be hard to narrow down the list to the “must buys.”
We’ve faced the stress before of wanting to find a drive that would tick the box in all the most important areas such as:
- Reliability
- Performance
- Durability
- Storage capacity
Every hard drive listed in this article is reputable by industry critics, user reviews, and our first hand experiences. As professional photographers, we absolutely need good backups that can stand the test of time so we can pull on old images and new to provide to our clients and continue to add to our social media feeds and portfolio.
We hope you found this post on the best external hard drives for photographers to be helpful for you. If you have any questions about external hard drives or storing your photos in general, drop us a line in the comment section below!
Related: For more great gear advice, check out the rest of our Recommended Gear sections!