Best External Drives for MacBook Air/Pro Laptops

You can use literally any external hard disk drive, solid state drive, flash memory, secure digital card... etc.

Connect and use other storage devices with Mac - Apple Support

Prices range from about five bucks to many thousands depending on capacity and connection methods.

If you are overwhelmed by the number of options and have no idea where to begin, start here: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-storage

For backing up use pretty much any name brand quality HDD. Skip the store brands or discount devices.

If you need storage space more then spend an HDD will work just fine. If you need speed you'll need SSDs.

Our HDDs were LaCie and we never had problems. Our SSDs are Samsung T7 and again we've never had problems.

We all have our favorites.

iPhoneography wrote:

I just got a new 15 inch MacBook Air for school, and was wondering which external hard drives you recommend to me, so I can use them for school projects.

Thank you!

Just about any SSD will work. Make sure you use DiskUtility to format the drive when you attach it for the first time. Do not use any included apps to manage the drive, use Disk Utility.

x2 regarding the need to format whatever external drive you get.

If you want to skip the need for an adaptor, you might want to concentrate on external drives that offer a USB-C type connector. You'll get speeds a bit faster than USB-A.

If you want to get the fastest possible external drive, then go with drives that offer a Thunderbolt connection. (It's the same type of connector as USB-C). This will give you the fastest possible speed...especially if it's combined with SSD memory vs a spinning platter inside.

Since you mentioned you want the drive to use for school projects, you'll actually want to look into getting two external drives. One for the school projects, and the other for use as a Time Machine backup drive.