Rating of portable hard drives. The best external hard drives for secure data storage

External hard disks 1 TB, in most cases, completely solves the problem of lack of space for stored information. Ask yourself: “Do I need as much as 4 TB disk space? Will I be able to fill at least 1 TB?” I bet most of you will answer no. In this article we will talk about the most reliable, conscientiously made and overall the best external hard drives for 1 TB in price/quality ratio. So, let's begin!

1. WD My Passport Ultra 1 TB

Western Digital has long established itself as a reliable manufacturer hard drives, and the case with WD My Passport Ultra is no exception. This external drive model is sold in five volume options internal memory– 500 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB, and also in four colors – black, blue, white and dark red. You don't have to worry about compatibility because WD My Passport Ultra works great on both Windows and Mac computers. Note that the hard drive is initially formatted with the NTFS file system, so to use it on a Mac you will need to reformat it with the HFS+ file system.

Included with this external hard disk, there are three special utilities at once - WD Utility, WD Security and WD SmartWare Pro. In addition, you can download all this necessary software from the official Western Digital website. It is worth noting that all of the above programs will only work on Windows platforms, whereas for Mac machines you will have to use no less effective software Time Machine. Using WD Security, you can set password protection against unauthorized access by third parties. Using WD SmartWare, you can backup all your information to the cloud Dropbox service, however, before doing this you should register on this site.

My Passport supports both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. Using USB connections 2.0 read speed is 30 MB/s and write speed is 28 MB/s. The speed of the drive when using a USB 3.0 connection is impressive - 118 MB/s for reading and 120 MB/s for writing. The drive was quiet and showed almost no vibration during testing. WD My Passport Ultra is sold with a 3-year manufacturer's warranty, which is significantly more than any other supplier can offer (2 years are standard). This external hard drive is an excellent choice for those looking for a reliable storage device. important information, and for those who are active players in Xbox One and Playstation 4.

2. Seagate Expansion 1 TB

In our ranking of the TOP 5 best external hard drives of 2017 Seagate Expansion takes second place. It is worth noting that this line of hard drives have been replenished with a new model STEA1000400, available in 5 variations of memory sizes: 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, 3 TB and 4 TB. Anyone who needs to increase their disk space should definitely pay attention to Seagate Expansion. On this moment The Seagate Expansion is priced comparable to our #1 rated WD My Passport Ultra. Please note that the Seagate Expansion is sold without any accompanying software, which, in fact, brought him only to the 2nd line of our rating. Both the old and new Seagate Expansion models support data transfer via USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 standards, and also use the same port for both transmitting information and receiving power. The disc is sold only in black.

The Seagate Expansion external hard drive is initially sold formatted in the NTFS file system for Windows, but if you plan to use the drive with Mac computers, you will have to perform an initial reformat of the device. It is worth noting that in terms of the internal spindle speed of 5400 RPM, this hard drive surpasses the WD Passport Ultra and all other drives presented in our rating. In our tests, the disk showed the following figures: writing - 121 MB/s, reading 129 MB/s. Based on these numbers, it's safe to say that the Expansion is one of the fastest external hard drives on the market today.

3. Toshiba Canvio Connect II 1 TB

Compact external hard drive Toshiba Canvio Connect II(model HDTC810XK3A1) has good reliability and high-quality software included (Pogoplug PC and NTI Backup Now EZ). Note that the same Pogoplug PC separately costs $30. This device Available in four internal storage options: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 3TB. And in five colors - black, blue, red, white and white-gold. In terms of available colors, Toshiba Canvio Connect II is the most “multi-colored” external hard drive of all 5 presented in our rating. In terms of price, this external device is slightly more expensive than both the WD My Passport Ultra and the Seagate Expansion.

NTI Backup Now EZ is very simple, but at the same time very powerful program Reserve copy. If your Canvio is connected to a PC, and the computer is connected to the Internet, then you can log into your external device remotely using mobile application. In other words, your external hard drive turns into a full-fledged personal cloud storage. The Canvio Connect supports both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, but we sometimes experienced some difficulty transferring data over the USB 2.0 interface. But you shouldn’t be upset, because why use a slower USB 2.0 when USB 3.0 works perfectly? When transferring data via USB 3.0, the write speed is 100 MB/s and the read speed is 98 MB/s. This figure is quite good for an external drive, but still does not reach the levels of the Seagate Expansion and CV My Passport Ultra, which are located above. Canvio Connect is natively formatted in the NTFS file system, in order to use it with Mac machines you will need to install Tuxera NTFS software for Mac, after which you can use this device with special Time Machine software.

4. Seagate Backup Plus/Slim 1 TB

5. Toshiba Canvio Basics USB 3.0 1 TB

(HDTB220XK3CA) already in its name indicates its commonality and basicness. The 1TB model costs more than all of its direct competitors. Canvio Basics is sold in five storage options: 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB. What is puzzling is the warranty: for each amount of built-in memory, the manufacturer gives a different warranty, which varies from 1 to 3 years. Toshiba Canvio is sold without any included software, which is undoubtedly a huge disadvantage. This external device transmits information and is powered using the same USB port, and at the same time supports transmission interfaces USB data 2.0 and USB 3.0. Note that despite the lack of included software and a strange warranty policy, Toshiba is famous for the reliability of its disk drives, which is why many server owners prefer Toshiba over Seagate, Western Digital or HGST.

The speed of the internal 2.5-inch hard drive is 5400RPM, which is generally standard for most external hard drives. The disk will work on both Windows and Mac machines. The buffer cache is 8MB, and average time search – 12m/s. Performance of this disk slightly lower than other external devices presented in our rating. The read speed is 95 MB/s, while the write speed is 89 MB/s.

Your choice must be taken with full responsibility, because the performance of your device and the safety of documents will depend on it.

When purchasing a HDD, you need to pay attention to various factors: reliability, manufacturer, technical characteristics (depending on the required tasks), compatibility with other components of your PC or laptop.

External HDD: basic parameters

Basically, when choosing external hard drives, you need to focus on the following characteristics: memory type, form factor, disk space, interface.

You also need to consider the speed at which the disk rotates, the speed at which data is transferred, additional functions(for example, the ability to recharge USB devices).

Let's look at the main ones.

External HDD: Form factor

The dimensions of the external drive are determined by the form factor.

3.5". The largest of the form factors. The main advantage: large capacity (up to tens of terabytes). The disadvantages include heavy weight and cost.
2.5". The most common type of disk at the moment. Pros: light weight, can be powered from a USB connector, capacity – up to 500 gigabytes.
1.8". Today they are the most compact. The main advantage is small dimensions. The downside is that there is a small selection, since they began to be produced relatively recently.

External HDD: Interface

Interface HDD– this is a way to connect the disk directly to the computer (into which connector it is connected). The most common options are:

There are also combined systems (SSD is used for caching files, HDD is used for storing information).

HDD is a classic of the genre. Best suited for long-term storage. Disadvantages include noise (due to moving plates).
SSD – due to the fact that it is a solid-state drive, it does not (like an HDD) have moving parts. Main advantages: high data transfer speed, small size. One of the disadvantages is the relatively small amount of memory.

External HDD: major manufacturers

Several specialize in the production of external HDDs large companies. The most popular of them are:

Seagate (USA)

It is considered one of the largest manufacturers of external HDDs.

Among the advantages, it is worth noting the affordability, the disadvantages are reliability; most often, it is the disks of this manufacturer that are handed over to service centers.

Western Digital (USA)

Enough famous manufacturer, produces reliable disks that rarely break. Some models differ in their “tricks” (for example, “cool” disks with low disk rotation speed).

Transcend (Taiwan)

It is considered the most popular manufacturer of external HDDs in Russia and other post-Soviet countries. They bribe you with an affordable price.

The downside is low performance in various reliability ratings.

External HDD: the best drives of 2017

1 place. WD My Passport Ultra 1TB

The discs of this manufacturer have a well-deserved reputation for their reliability.

This model comes in five variants (depending on the capacity from 50 GB to 3 TB) and in four colors - white, blue, black and dark red.

Compatible with both PCs and laptops from .

Comes with three special utilities (WD SmartWare Pro, WD Utility, WD Security).

To work on Mac you will have to download special utility Time Machine, featuring a clear interface.

Main characteristics:

Interface: USB 3.0; USB 2.0
Volume: 500GB; 1TB; 1.5TB; 2TB; 3TB
Write/read speed: 118MB/s, 120MB/s

Additionally: software that allows you to access cloud storage and special coding.

2nd place. Seagate Expansion 1 TB

A new model from this manufacturer, STEA1000400, has been released onto the market, which is available in five versions (depending on memory capacity): from 500 GB to 4 TB.

The only “minus” of this model is the lack of software, however, it is easy to find and download for free on the Internet.

The device is capable of supporting data transfer via USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. One port is used for power supply and receiving information; the color of the disk is black.

Main characteristics:

Interface: USB 3.0; USB 2.0
Volume: 500GB; 1TB; 2TB; 3TB; 4TB
Write/read speed: 129 MB/s and 121 MB/s

Additionally: optimal ratio of cost to disk space

3rd place. Toshiba Canvio Connect II 1TB

This disk is compact, reliable and comes with good software, including the Pogoplug PC program, which costs $30 if you buy it separately from the disk.

Sold in four versions, depending on the amount of memory - from 50 GB to 3 TB. Available in five colors - black, red, white-gold, blue and white.

Capable of working with both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, however users note possible difficulties at the first connection option.

Initially in the NTFS system, for use with Apple equipment you need to install a special program called Tuxera NTFS for Mac.

Main characteristics:

Interface: USB 3.0; USB 2.0
Volume: 500GB; 1TB; 2TB; 3TB
Write/read speed: 98 MB/s, 100 MB/s

Additionally: there is the possibility of automatic backup; if necessary, you can configure access from any gadget to files in Canvio Connect II.

4th place. Seagate Backup Plus/Slim 1 TB

This HDD is available in five versions, depending on the memory capacity: from 500 GB to 4 TB.

A nice bonus: after registering the disk on the manufacturer’s website, you can get 200 GB of free space. Microsoft OneDrive(if purchased separately, you will have to pay $95 for this).

However, hurry up, this promotion ends on June 30th. The Seagate Dashboard application is also included with this HDD.

This device is offered in two versions: Buckup Plus Slim (thickness - 0.5 inches, memory capacity - up to 2 TB, four color options) and Seagate Buckup Plus (thickness - 1.3 inches, memory capacity - 4 TB, black only ).

Main characteristics:

Interface: USB 3.0; USB 2.0
Volume: 500GB; 1TB; 1.5TB; 2TB; 4TB
Write/read speed: 125 MB/s and 120 MB/s

Additionally: free 200 GB (storage period - 2 years).

5th place. Toshiba Canvio Basics USB 3.0 1 TB

This HDD comes in five versions, depending on the memory capacity: from 500 GB to 2 TB.

For an unknown reason, the manufacturer provides different warranties for its devices, depending on the disk size: from 1 to 3 years.

The main disadvantage: the disc is sold without software, which you will have to download yourself.

Feeds and transmits information this HDD using the same USB port.

The performance of this HDD is lower than that of its competitors: with a read speed of 95 MB/s, the write speed is only 89 MB/s.

Main characteristics:

Interface: USB 3.0; USB 2.0
Volume: 500GB; 750GB; 1TB; 1.5TB; 2TB
Write/read speed: 95 MB/s and 89 MB/s

Additionally: the device has a built-in shock sensor, and technology has been introduced to reduce vibration during operation.

External HDD is not detected: what to do

Sometimes users encounter a problem when a laptop or computer cannot see external HDD.

The reasons may be different, let's look at the most common ones.

In most cases, they help deal with the problem without involving a specialist in solving it.

To begin (after installing the external HDD), go to computer management.

Go to the Control Panel

To do this, you need to select the control panel, go to system and security settings.

Format the disk

If the external HDD works on other devices (for example, it is seen by another computer or TV), then the reason for not being detected may be incompatibility with the operating system or the lack of necessary drivers.

IN in this case, the order of your actions is as follows.

First, check the USB port to which you are connecting the external HDD.

To do this, just connect a regular one to it. If the flash drive is detected, then the problem is not with the USB port.

In this case, go to the device manager (click “Control Panel”, go to the “System and Security” tab, then select “Device Manager”.

Let's look at two tabs: disk devices and other devices.

This screenshot shows that the operating system did not see the drivers for the external HDD, which is why the computer did not find it.

There are two ways to correct the situation:

1. First, click the “Update hardware configuration” tab; after activating it, the drivers are installed automatically.

If the necessary drivers are not on your computer, one of the special programs search for drivers, of which there are many on the Internet, or search for the required driver on the manufacturer’s website.

2. The second option is preferable, since you may accidentally download the wrong driver and the device will still not work.

Installing drivers

Every time we have to start annual results for hard drives on a pessimistic note. It's no secret that solid state drives are inexorably pushing their magnetic predecessors out of the market. This process is happening most rapidly in the area of client devices - mobile and desktop PCs, as well as mission-critical corporate storage. On the other hand, hard drives have been and in the foreseeable future will remain in demand as a means of recording large amounts of data that do not require such high access speeds as SSDs provide. In the consumer sphere, these are home NAS, and in the corporate sphere, these are the lower echelons of storage systems with solid-state cache, cold data storage, and intermediate options, referred to as nearline.

However, throughout 2017, contrary to the historical trend, the demand for HDDs practically did not decrease compared to record lows in mid-2016, and at the end it was already significantly higher. HDD shipments are keeping prices afloat for NAND Flash memory, and at the same time, the three surviving HDD manufacturers (Seagate, Toshiba and WD) have introduced a ton of new models.

3.5-inch hard drives with a capacity of 10-12 TB, originally from the corporate sector, have spread to the market for devices for PCs and NAS, and server models have already conquered the capacity of 14 TB. Together, WD and HGST, which have been the driving force of HDD development in recent years, have been very active by Toshiba, which has released a wide range of models for NAS and server racks. In addition to the traditional growth in storage capacity, 2017 was distinguished by related technological advances. Sealed hard drives filled with helium can now hold up to nine platters, and 10 TB HDDs, as it turns out, can be produced without helium. A galaxy of revolutionary technologies looms on the horizon for hard drives, some of which, as manufacturers once again promise, are ready for implementation in the near future.

⇡ ServerHDDform factor 3.5 inches

The record of 12 TB of capacity for a single 3.5-inch hard drive was set by HGST in 2016, but only a few months later the company began mass shipments of the Ultrastar He12 series. Subsequently, this model, deprived of a number of functions, appeared in the Western Digital catalog under the WD Gold brand. Speed sequential access data consumption in these devices reaches 255 MB/s.

Unlike the Ultrastar He12, WD Gold is available exclusively with the SATA interface and does not support internal encryption, native access to 4 KB sectors and Media Cache technology, which allows the use of areas distributed over the surface of the platters as buffer zones. Both drives contain eight platters with a usable capacity of 1.5 TB in a sealed housing. And by the way, WD Gold remained the only nearline model in the WD catalog, since the WD Re series went into retirement.

HGST Ultrastar He12 12 TB

HGST Ultrastar Hs14 14 TB

HGST reached its next milestone, 14 TB, with tiled magnetic recording (SMR). SMR itself is no longer considered as the main way to increase recording density, but the new Ultrastar Hs14 model has managed to largely compensate for the inherent shortcomings of this technology. In HGST's previous SMR experiment, the Ultrastar Ha10, the drive's priority was reliability, so after each series of writes, the drive performed a test read of all tracks that overlapped those tracks whose data had been modified. Ultrastar Hs14 only does this if there are write errors. Thanks to this change and increased recording density (the disk contains eight 1.75 TB platters), the Hs14 managed to radically increase the write speed compared to the Ha10 and achieve linear performance of 233 MB/s. The implementation of SMR in Ultrastar Hs14 is host-managed. This means that the operating system is tasked with organizing I/O commands in such a way that the number of RMW (read-modify-write) operations that are inevitable when rewriting data on a tiled plate is minimized, and therefore the hard drive runs on peak performance. At the moment, none of the widely distributed operating systems has such functions, so HGST is ready to ship Ultrastar Hs14 drives only at the request of selected customers.

Seagate also launched a 12 TB server HDD under the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD brand, which was then renamed Exos 12. Like the competing product from HGST, this drive comes in configurations with a SATA or SAS interface. In the latter case, full-disk encryption with a quick data wipe function and native access to 4K partitioning are supported. In drives of this class, Seagate uses a complex write buffering model - Advanced Write Caching. It includes Media Cache - sections of spare sectors distributed over the surface of the platters, data duplication in DRAM and non-volatile memory for emergency recording in the event of a power failure. The linear performance of the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD 12 TB is 261 MB/s.

Seagate has so far slowed down the development of hard drives with SMR technology. The only similar model in its catalog is the Archive HDD with a capacity of up to 8 TB, renamed Exos 5E8 as part of a rebranding campaign for Seagate enterprise products. Unlike the HGST Ultrastar Hs14, the SMR implementation in Exos 5E8 is drive-managed: the hard drive independently reorganizes data writing commands and, as a result, runs any common OS.

In recent years, Toshiba has not sought to increase the capacity of its hard drives as actively as other manufacturers, and has refrained from using helium. In particular, at the time of summing up, the company could offer only 6 TB of capacity - among both consumer and corporate HDDs. But in the time since then, Toshiba has not only eliminated the technological gap from its rivals, but has also become a leader. First, the MG05ACA series of nearline drives with a SATA interface appeared, the older model of which uses six platters with a usable capacity of 1.33 TB (total volume 8 TB), and then the MG06ACA series, which increased the volume to 10 TB using seven platters of 1 ,43 TB. The sequential data access speed of the MG05ACA and MG06ACA reaches 230 and 249 MB/s, respectively. Similar to corporate Seagate drives Toshiba equips these models with a Flash memory chip that is used to rescue data in the event of a power failure (PWC, Persistent Write Cache).

It is noteworthy that, while other companies supply 10-terabyte HDDs exclusively in sealed cases filled with helium, Toshiba made do with a standard design with a ventilated case. As you can see, helium is no longer a prerequisite for such a high density of plates, although before the introduction of helium, manufacturers did not dare to pack more than five pieces into a case.

Toshiba AMG07AC 14 TB

The successes of Toshiba's HDD division in 2017 did not end at the 10 TB mark. It is this company that has the honor of introducing the industry's first 14 TB hard drive. The older model MG07ACA with such a capacity contains nine 1.55 TB platters, and in this case the manufacturer still had to resort to “laughing gas”. In addition, Toshiba used Showa Denko magnetic plates, the thickness of which has been reduced from 0.8 to 0.635 mm compared to the previous generation, and a two-stage actuator with new TDK heads. The plate spacing in the MG07ACA is only 1.58mm. The series also includes a 12 TB model based on eight platters, and the disk speed is 250 and 260 MB/s for linear data reading/writing. The only interface option for connecting the MG07ACA to the host controller is SATA. PWC technology is provided to protect data in case of power loss. Commercial deliveries of drives of this family will begin in the 1st-2nd quarters of 2018.

⇡ ServerHDDform factor 2.5 inches (SFF)

The prospects for SFF (Small Form Factor) hard drives with a rotation speed of 10-15 thousand rpm look gloomy against the backdrop of widespread adoption solid state memory in mission-critical storage, but as a result, the fastest magnetic drives continue to go on sale, and manufacturers release new models in this category.

Seagate introduced the ninth generation of Enterprise Performance 10K HDDs under the Exos 10E2400 brand with a spindle speed of 10 thousand rpm. The volume in this series reaches 2.4 TB, and linear read/write performance is 279 MB/s. The Enterprise Performance 15K HDD v6 series of drives (capacity up to 900 GB, linear read/write speed up to 300 MB/s), which Seagate updated in 2016, remains in service and now bears the name Exos 15E900.

Seagate Exos 10E2400 2.4 TB

To speed up write operations in SFF form factor drives, Seagate uses Advanced Write Caching technology, which combines caching areas on the surface of the platters and a DRAM buffer with data redundancy in solid-state memory. In addition, Flash memory is also used here to service read operations by caching frequently repeated requests.

Toshiba has brought the volumes of its SFF models to the Seagate level: 2.4 TB for ten-thousanders and 900 GB for HDDs with a spindle speed of 15 thousand rpm. The AL15SEB series achieves a performance of 260 MB/s (at a non-standard speed of 10.5 thousand rpm), and the AL14SXB achieves 290 MB/s. All of these drives feature Flash-based PWC (Persistent Write Cache) to back up data in case of power failure.

HGST continues to supply Ultrastar C10K1800 and Ultrastar C15K600 series hard drives with a maximum capacity of 1800/900 GB respectively and Media Cache technology.

HDDfor desktop PCs andNAS

In 2016, Seagate and WD adapted developments using helium to produce hard drives for desktop PCs and NAS. Since then, Western Digital has increased the capacity of drives in the , Red Pro and Purple families from 8 TB to 10 TB with seven platters with a usable capacity of 1.43 TB. Among these models, only Red Pro has a spindle speed of 7200 rpm, while the others are content with 5400 rpm. WD Blue and WD Black series drives still do not exceed 6 TB in capacity.

The second half of the Western Digital holding, HGST, introduced a new Deskstar NAS model, similar in characteristics to the Red Pro, as part of a boxed set for retail sale. In contrast, regular Deskstar series drives for desktop PCs have long stopped at the 4 TB mark.

Seagate once again offers the highest capacity drives of any hard drive manufacturer for network storage. Introduced in 2016, the BarraCuda Pro, IronWolf and IronWolf Pro series were replenished with 12 TB models based on eight 1.5 TB platters. IronWolf drives with a capacity of 6 TB or more, as well as all IronWolf Pro and BarraCuda Pro, are characterized by a spindle speed of 7200 rpm, the rest - 5900 rpm.

Seagate BarraCuda, IronWolf, IronWolf Pro 12 TB

FireCuda hybrid HDDs still do not exceed 8 TB in volume, and drives for SkyHawk video surveillance systems are 10 TB, but Seagate has introduced an additional SkyHawk AI model with a capacity of up to 12 TB. Now even hard drive manufacturers are getting behind the hype. machine learning, because the peculiarity of the SkyHawk AI firmware is that, in addition to continuous video recording from 64 surveillance cameras using ATA Streaming Feature Set commands, the disk provides sufficient speed for 16 reading threads, which can be used by a neural network that analyzes the data. Unlike standard models SkyHawk, in discs marked AI, the spindle speed is increased from 5900 to 7200 rpm.

Toshiba N300 8 TB

Toshiba has released analogues of its nearline disks with a capacity of 8 and 10 TB with a spindle speed of 7200 rpm in the consumer HDD category. The series, with a maximum capacity of 8 TB (no helium, six 1.33 TB platters) is intended for NAS, and its sister X300 is for desktop PCs. The MD06ACA-V family of drives is aimed at video surveillance systems and contains up to seven 1.43-terabyte platters with a total capacity of 10 terabytes. Unlike enterprise models, Toshiba client drives do not support PWC (Persistent Write Cache).

2.5-inchHDDwith interfaceSATA

The maximum capacity of a 2.5-inch HDD in a 7mm mobile chassis remains 2TB with SMR technology, while a 15mm HDD capacity of 5TB is possible. At the moment, the only drives with this set of characteristics are the Seagate BarraCuda and the FireCuda hybrid model. By the way, FireCuda is the only mobile “hybrid” that has survived on the market, since WD has stopped producing such devices.

The highest achievement of traditional perpendicular magnetic recording (PRM) technology in a 2.5-inch hard drive with a SATA interface remains 3 TB - such a drive with a case thickness of 15 mm based on four 750 GB platters is available from Toshiba (MQ03ABB series). There are also 4-terabyte models, but they are used exclusively as part of portable drives and are not sold separately.

Other manufacturers, besides Seagate and Toshiba, are only willing to offer 2 TB in a 15mm case (this is new for 2017 in the WD Blue series). The maximum capacity of thin disks (7 and 9.5 mm) remains 1 TB. The only hard drive for NAS in a compact form factor is WD Red.

As for drives in ultra-thin cases (5 mm), they officially ceased to exist after WD discontinued the corresponding WD Blue model.

⇡ Plans for the near future

In the next year or two, the capacity of 3.5-inch hard drives using traditional perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology will continue to grow. This can occur by increasing data density while maintaining the existing “standard” for the number of wafer. Then Seagate and WD will release 14 TB nearline drives based on eight platters with a usable capacity of 1.8 TB. An alternative is to tightly pack the existing 1.55TB wafer packs of 9 into sealed helium-filled cases, as Toshiba has already done. It is also possible to combine both approaches, which will create hard drives with a capacity of 16 TB.

A further increase in recording density faces the limit of PRM technology in its “pure” form. T.n. superparamagnetic limit dictates minimum size a single grain from several hundred grains that make up a magnetic domain on the surface of the plate. For a grain corresponding to the superparamagnetic limit, the difference in the energy of the “zero” and “one” states is already comparable to the energy of temperature fluctuations, which entails an increased risk of charge changes. As part of the HAMR technology, instead of cobalt alloys (as now), other materials (for example, an alloy of iron and platinum or gold-based alloys) with an increased ability to retain charge (and, as a result, resist its change) will be used in magnetic plates. And in order to temporarily make the material more receptive to recording, it is proposed to heat it with a laser or microwave radiation source (MAMR) as it passes the recording head. The theoretical limit for recording density when using HAMR is estimated at 50 Tbit/in2, which gives a capacity of 80 TB per 3.5-inch hard drive platter.

Seagate promised to begin trial shipments of HAMR-based devices in 2017, but as a result, plans have shifted to 2018, and in 2019 the time will come for commercial batches of hard drives up to 20 TB. Then Seagate is ready to annually increase the recording density by 30% - from 2 to 6 Tbit/inch 2. For comparison, in modern HDDs with platters with a usable capacity of 1.5 TB, the recording density is 923 Gbit/inch 2.

Western Digital, on the other hand, has bet on Alternative option technology - MAMR - and is not so optimistic about the timing of its implementation: the start of production of WD drives using MAMR is planned for 2019. WD considers the achievable recording density to be 4 Tbit/inch 2 - less than Seagate, but MAMR has a number of advantages in terms of compared to HAMR: it is cheaper to implement in production, and HDD operation There is no heating of the magnetic plate, which reduces the overall reliability of the device and entails the need for wear leveling mechanisms at the host controller level.

Another technology that hard drive manufacturers are actively working on, TDMR (Two-Dimensional Magnetic Recording), is aimed not so much at increasing the recording density as such (although it will allow this to be done by 5-10% when using standard PMR), but at make reading from plates with high density records. In addition to the superparamagnetic limit, there is a separate difficulty in reading information from closely located tracks. Engineers propose to increase the signal-to-noise ratio by using an array of heads that process one or more tracks simultaneously. The debut of this method in commercial drives was expected in 2017, but, most likely, TDMR will not be used until HAMR/MAMR becomes widespread. By the way, all three technologies can be combined with “tiled” recording, SMR.

In terms of performance, all of the above solutions only affect the speed of linear data reading/writing. The response time of the HDD is still determined by the spindle speed and the mobility of the actuator arm. Increasing the first parameter above 7200 rpm for 3.5-inch hard drives and 15 thousand rpm for SFF has long been recognized as inappropriate, but Seagate proposed improving the actuator, and, at first glance, the most in a simple way— by placing two such components in the housing of a single HDD. This idea in itself is not new for hard drive developers, but until recently, the commercial implementation of drives with two or more actuators was considered meaningless due to the high complexity of production and unobvious benefits, because the problem of parallelism in server storage is solved by arrays. But now, with hard drives reaching capacities as high as 12 or 14 TB, too many requests to the array end up on a separate HDD, and Seagate decided that the time for the dual actuator had finally come. The implementation of this design in commercial models is planned for the “near future,” according to the company, and it appears that the dual actuator is being seen primarily as a companion to technologies that increase wafer recording density, such as HAMR.

External storage devices, unlike compact FLASH memory, allow you not only to store large amounts of information, but also to backups operating systems and databases. Compatibility with the vast majority of devices (PCs, laptops, game consoles, TV set-top boxes) makes external drives universal. Equipping with high-speed interfaces allows you to load or copy data as quickly as possible, reducing the time spent working with the disk.

Many world HDD manufacturers drives rely not only on the visual appeal of their devices, but also on memory capacity, data protection and compact dimensions that allow you to keep necessary information always at hand.

We've compiled a list of the best external hard drives based on expert reviews and reviews from real customers. Our recommendations will help you make a choice that suits your needs and desires. There are many competitors in the global technology market, but we have selected the best manufacturers and we recommend paying special attention to them:

Western Digital
Toshiba
ADATA
Seagate
Transcend

Volume: 500-1000 GB Volume: 2 TB Volume: over 2 TB Interface: USB 3.0 Form factor: 2.5 Form factor: 3.5

*Prices are correct at the time of publication and are subject to change without notice.