An assortment of drive enclosures
There are millions of exterior laptop storage instances in the marketplace. Some are good, some are unhealthy, and now we have opinions on that are one of the best laborious drive enclosures for Mac customers.
Storage is a persistent downside relating to shopping for Apple {hardware}. The price of upgrading the inner storage of a Mac or MacBook can get very steep in a short time, particularly when different upgrades are concerned (test the newest Mac prices).
To keep away from nosebleed stakes relating to storage, there are different methods to get extra capability with out paying Apple’s storage fees.
The best is to make use of external drives that may plug into the Mac. Although helpful for transportable workstations, you might be usually restricted to just one drive at finest, which implies you possibly can’t actually retailer huge quantities of knowledge.
A network-attached storage gadget (NAS) can even work, because it solves storage limitations by holding a number of drives. However you then’re restricted by bandwidth, as you have to entry the drives over a sluggish community.
A mix of the 2 is so as, and this number of drives curated by AppleInsider solves each velocity and capability points. By connecting on to the Mac, you are getting information as quick as your connection to it’s going to enable, whereas additionally having the ability to use a number of drives on the similar time.
Since you possibly can often add extra drives manually, they will also be versatile options. You possibly can simply begin with a smaller amount of storage to save cash, then add extra at a later time.
Greatest all-round exterior drive enclosure – OWC ThunderBay 4
The OWC ThunderBay 4 is a reasonably simple gadget, permitting as much as 4 20 gigabyte 3.5-inch and a couple of.4-inch drives to be saved inside its aluminum enclosure.
Greatest all-round exterior drive enclosure – OWC ThunderBay 4
You possibly can combine and match laborious disks and SSDs to are inclined to your storage wants, with entry speeds of as much as 1,527MB/s sustained underneath load. You even have extra flexibility in choices for RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, and 1+0, so you possibly can steadiness velocity and capability with redundancy to maintain your information protected.
It connects to your Mac utilizing Thunderbolt, nevertheless it additionally has a second Thunderbolt port so you should use it as a part of a daisy chain. This might help you maximize the 40Gbps bandwidth out there in Thunderbolt connections on fashionable Macs.
The enclosure alone with out drives might be acquired for $449.99 at Amazon, with drive configurations on OWC starting from 8TB for $979 to $2,649.99 for 80TB.
Greatest high-capacity exterior drive enclosure – Sabrent USB 3.2 3.5-inch SATA Exhausting Drive Tray-less Docking Station
If you wish to join an enormous variety of drives to your Mac, the Sabrent USB 3.2 3.5-inch SATA Exhausting Drive Tray-less Docking Station is a superb alternative. A severe piece of storage package, it is an aluminum tower which you can slot as much as ten 3.5-inch SATA 6 drives into, which might be accessed on the Mac.
Greatest high-capacity exterior drive enclosure – Sabrent USB 3.2 3.5-inch SATA Exhausting Drive Tray-less Docking Station
These drives might be put in and not using a tray, saving time, with every having unbiased energy switches, making them hot-swappable. To assist scale back warmth, there is a pair of 120mm followers to chill all the pieces down.
The enclosure connects to your Mac utilizing USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-C with UASP, giving it as much as 10Gbps of bandwidth to play with. You do not get any {hardware} RAID choices right here, although you possibly can arrange software program RAID if you wish to get as a lot out of the sheer variety of drives you possibly can stick into the factor.
Sabrent’s disk tower enclosure is obtainable for $599.99 on Amazon. Drives not included.
Greatest single-drive exterior drive enclosure – UGreen USB-C Exhausting Drive Enclosure
If you want to connect a single drive to your Mac, akin to a high-capacity disk for Time Machine backups, contemplate the UGreen USB-C Exhausting Drive Enclosure.
Greatest single-drive exterior drive enclosure – UGreen USB-C Exhausting Drive Enclosure
It is an aluminum enclosure that ought to match the casing of most Mac fashions, and it is also pretty compact. Holding a single 2.5-inch SATA SSD, it provides sufficient velocity whereas remaining transportable.
Because it’s an enclosure you insert a drive into, you possibly can select how a lot goes into it, and accomplish that utterly with out instruments. It helps as much as 6Gbps, with it connecting over USB 3.1 Gen 2 utilizing a USB-C to USB-C cable.
The UGreen USB-C Exhausting Drive Enclosure is $24.99 on Amazon, making it a reasonably simple buy for anybody with a spare drive.
Greatest hybrid exterior drive enclosure – TerraMaster D8 Hybrid
Positive, you possibly can have a number of drives, however if you’d like velocity whereas saving cash, there are comparatively few choices on the market. The TerraMaster D8 Hybrid could possibly be a very good answer on this case.
Greatest hybrid exterior drive enclosure – TerraMaster D8 Hybrid
An enclosure we reviewed in Might, the TerraMaster D8 Hybrid Drive is an enclosure that may maintain eight drives in complete. This consists of 4 trays that may maintain 24TB SATA laborious drives in addition to 4 NVMe M.2 SSDs, giving it a theoretical most of 128TB.
The good thing about that is that you should use a mix of quick storage for continuously accessed information, and cheaper and higher-capacity laborious disks for long-term storage. There are even JBOD, Single, RAID 0, RAID 1, and even 2+6 RAID configurations out there.
As for speeds over the USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection, you possibly can stand up to 980MB/s learn and 880MB/s write speeds for the M.2 drives individually, particular person SATA SSD speeds of 560MB/s, and 1,016MB/s when accessing 4 SSDs collectively.
Greatest gadget for archival drive entry – Sabrent USB Sort-C SATA Twin-Bay Exhausting Drive Docking System
Okay, now we have to confess, this is not strictly an enclosure, nevertheless it’s one thing that may assist anybody who has plenty of previous drives. Ones which have information that’s priceless sufficient to often entry, however not sufficient to maintain put in in a tool.
Greatest gadget for archival drive entry – Sabrent USB Sort-C SATA Twin-Bay Exhausting Drive Docking System
When you’re a knowledge hoarder with piles of drives on a shelf, you possibly can shortly entry them with the Sabrent USB Sort-C SATA Twin Bay Exhausting Drive Docking Station. Linked at 5Gbps USB 3.0, the toaster-like {hardware} can take as much as two 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drives in its two slots, which might then be mounted and skim in your Mac.
As soon as you have accessed what you want, you possibly can unmount the drive and eject it from the gadget earlier than stowing it away safely. In case you have a drive that is on its final legs, there’s additionally an offline cloning facility, which might copy information from one drive to a different newer one.
