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The Complete Guide to SSDs, HDDs, and External Storage

• By December 8, 2025 *

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These are transitional times for the storage market. After a year of relative price stability, familiar PCIe 4.0 and USB 3.2 drives are starting to creep upward in cost. At the same time, new PCIe 5.0 and USB4 models are landing with more efficient controllers, denser flash, and lower prices than earlier hardware built on the same interfaces. And in the biggest shake-up, Micron has abruptly shuttered its consumer brand, Crucial – a move that could meaningfully hurt competition in the SSD space.

Whether you’re upgrading a gaming PC, a creative workstation, or a laptop, today’s NVMe drives continue to push the boundaries of speed and reliability. For bulk storage needs, traditional hard drives still provide the best cost-per-terabyte, making them ideal for large media libraries and backups. External SSDs, meanwhile, strike a sweet spot between speed and portability, giving you fast access to your files wherever you go.

As always, TechSpot’s top storage picks are organized by form factor and use case, making it easy to zero in on the right option for your specific needs.

• Best Desktop SSDs
• Best for Mobile Devices
• Best Portable SSDs
• Best Hard Drive
• Best External Hard Drive
• Best Home NAS

Best SSDs for Desktop PCs and Laptops

WD Black SN8100 (Desktop) | WD SN7100 (Laptop)

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If you want the very best SSD you can buy right now, your two main options are the Sandisk WD Black SN8100 (previously sold under Western Digital’s name) and the Crucial T710 (while supplies last). Both drives use the same Silicon Motion controller, paired with different flavors of flash memory.

While the WD SN8100 usually tops the charts in synthetic benchmarks, the T710 pulls ahead in efficiency. That extra efficiency is why the previous-gen T705’s optional heat spreader, shaped like a Mayan pyramid, was retired in favor of something that looks more like a pencil holder.

If you need 8TB on a single drive, the SanDisk model is the obvious pick. It’s a massive step up from the older SN850X in sustained writes and power efficiency, even on systems that only support PCIe 4.0.

Saving a bit

The Samsung 9100 Pro is easy to overlook as a 990 Pro with PCIe 5.0 tacked on, but for most people it’s more than enough, and with the current price difference it’s a worthwhile investment. Even if your current system doesn’t support PCIe 5.0, your next one almost certainly will.

For desktop PCs, we generally recommend an SSD with its own DRAM, which helps when you’re digging through hundreds of gigabytes of data. For a laptop, however, this consideration is often secondary to power draw. That’s where the SanDisk WD Black SN7100 lands: it’s limited to PCIe 4.0, but uses the same flash as the SN8100, making it far more efficient than older PCIe 4.0 options.

Best for Older PCs and Laptops

The Samsung 870 Evo remains the only decent SATA SSD on the market. It includes onboard DRAM – critical for SATA drives that can’t lean on system memory – and uses TLC flash. If you’re upgrading a desktop or laptop that only supports SATA, this is your go-to option.

Best for Mobile Devices like the Steam Deck and Surface Pro

Corsair MP600 Mini

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To expand storage on a Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, or Surface Pro, you’re locked into a single form factor: the short 2230 M.2 drive. Updated in 2024 with Phison’s E27T controller, the Corsair MP600 Mini is essentially a fun-sized version of the MP600 Elite, one of the best DRAM-less SSDs of its day.

To stay Steam Deck-friendly, all components sit on one side of the PCB. That layout forces manufacturers to use denser flash for 2TB models, but in practice it doesn’t change much.

Since the Deck only runs at PCIe 3.0 speeds, you won’t see any real-world difference between the MP600 Mini and the older SanDisk WD Black SN770M, which can’t take full advantage of its PCIe 4.0 interface anyway.

There are other 2230 M.2 drives out there, but they either top out at smaller capacities or rely on QLC flash, making them a poor value – if they provide any savings at all.

Best Portable SSDs

Corsair EX400U USB4

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Fast, portable storage can be a lifesaver in some situations and a routine necessity in others. External drive enclosures let you turn an internal SSD into an external one – and potentially swap it back later – while adding perks like USB4 speeds and water/shock-resistant housings. But if you’re shopping for a brand-new drive, today’s all-in-one externals offer surprisingly strong value.

Right now, the standout pick is Corsair’s USB4-enabled EX400U, which delivers 4,000 MB/s reads and 3,600 MB/s writes. In long, sustained transfers it’s no faster than USB 3.2 options like Samsung’s T9 or Crucial’s X10 Pro, but it still hits impressive peak speeds. It even supports MagSafe, letting you snap it onto the back of your phone and record video straight to the drive.

If you have a Thunderbolt 5 connector, LaCie’s Rugged Pro5 can push things even further with 6,700 MB/s reads and 5,300 MB/s writes. The catch: it may not work at all on anything slower than USB4.

It’s a solid choice if you just want extra storage on a Mac, but if you plan to shuttle files between different systems, the Corsair drive remains the safer, more compatible option. And if the appeal of the LaCie is its tough exterior, you can always opt for the Rugged SSD4 instead.

Best Hard Drives

WD Red Plus | WD Blue (Budget)

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For years, WD Red Plus and Seagate IronWolf drives have been the default picks for secondary PC storage and home NAS setups, while their higher-end siblings – WD Red Pro and IronWolf Pro – target larger, more demanding server environments.

The catch is that these drives tend to get frequent but silent mid-cycle updates with no name changes, and major outlets rarely review the refreshed versions. In their current iterations, both brands are essentially equivalent: you get a three-year warranty, 256MB of cache, and high-density platters that offset their relatively low spindle speeds, keeping noise levels down.

Our advice comes down to buying experience: Seagate still sells older models alongside faster and quieter ones, and it’s not always easy to tell them apart. WD is more straightforward – you can be fairly certain whether you’re getting the latest revisions.

Budget Option: WD Blue

If you’re just dropping a single drive into your PC and don’t need vibration resistance, the WD Blue and Seagate Barracuda are the two mainstream options. WD gets the nod here for a different reason: most current Blue models use conventional magnetic recording (CMR) instead of shingled magnetic recording (SMR), which trades performance for higher density. CMR simply offers more consistent behavior for everyday desktop use.

Best External Hard Drive

WD My Book | WD My Passport Ultra (Compact)

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The cost and capacity advantages of mechanical drives make them a smart pick for storing data outside your PC. Backups, media archives, and other massive datasets – the kind that easily stretch into multiple terabytes – are often safer and more manageable when kept externally. For maximum reliability, your best bet is placing one of our recommended internal HDDs inside an external enclosure with its own power connector. That setup helps ensure a broken USB port won’t suddenly lock you out of your files.

But if you’d rather go the plug-and-play route, WD’s My Book is the clear standout, offering a lot of dependable storage for surprisingly little money. Models run from 4TB all the way up to 26TB. Currently, some of the better options are the 8TB model for $170, the 12TB version for $235, and the 16TB drive for $300.

The My Book ships pre-formatted in exFAT and includes WD’s backup software for Windows and macOS. Just don’t expect speed: with a slow-spinning disk drive and a USB 3.0 interface, sequential reads and writes land around 170 – 180 MB/s, with even slower random access. Those numbers would be unacceptable for a boot drive, but they’re perfectly fine for the My Book’s main purpose: cost-effective, reliable storage for infrequently accessed data.

There are a few quirks to consider. The drive uses a Micro-B USB 3.0 to USB-A connector instead of the more common USB-C, and it lacks an activity LED. It also relies on a separate 12V power adapter (included), which makes it better suited to a stationary setup. On the upside, you get password-protected 256-bit hardware encryption and a three-year warranty – longer than Seagate’s competing model. Overall, the WD My Book remains the best budget-friendly external storage option available today.

A Compact Alternative: WD My Passport Ultra

If you want something portable without breaking the bank, WD’s My Passport Ultra strikes an ideal balance of capacity, performance, portability, and price.

Its slim, pocket-ready design houses up to 6TB of storage, though the 5TB model currently offers the best bang for the buck at $125. Smaller 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB versions fill out the lower end. This drive also brings welcome upgrades like a USB-C port (with a USB-A adapter included), an activity light, onboard hardware encryption, useful software tools, and a three-year warranty.

Performance won’t blow you away, but its roughly 130 MB/s read and write speeds are right in line with similar portable HDDs. Considering the price, features, and convenience, that’s more than enough for everyday storage needs.

Best Home NAS

QNAP TS-464-8G | Synology DS225+

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If you don’t have the need for a desktop PC, a pre-built NAS can be a compact and power-efficient alternative for backing up files from all your devices. These days, QNAP seems to offer the best balance of features and ease of use.

One of the best options is the QNAP TS-464-8G, a four-bay unit that supports SATA HDDs or SSDs in RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, or 10, with up to 72TB of total capacity before you even consider expansion units. It also includes two PCIe 3.0 x1 M.2 slots that can take 2TB SSDs for caching or extra storage – still faster than SATA, no expansion cards required.

The TS-464-8G runs on Intel’s Celeron N5095 and ships with a single 8GB RAM stick (expandable to 16GB). Connectivity is generous: dual 2.5Gb Ethernet ports with trunking, two USB 3.1 ("3.2 Gen 2") ports, and an HDMI 2.1 port capable of 4K60 output.

For $1,009, you can buy it pre-configured with four 4TB WD Red Plus drives in RAID 5, giving you 12TB of usable space and protection against a single-drive failure.

Synology Alternatives

If you have a preference for Synology’s NAS models or their software, the DS925+ is a powerful $600 4-bay NAS that supports up to 80TB of raw capacity, plus two NVMe SSDs for cache or storage, and it can scale to a total of nine drives via an expansion unit.

Powered by a quad-core AMD Ryzen V1500B, the DS925+ includes 4GB of DDR4 RAM (expandable to 32GB), two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports with link aggregation, a USB-C expansion port, and two USB 3.0 ("3.1 Gen 2") ports.

For less, Synology’s entry-level DiskStation DS225+ is a great two-bay NAS starting at $340. It includes two empty drive bays and two M.2 slots, supporting up to 40TB of total storage. Essentially a refresh of the older DS224+, it features a quad-core Celeron J4125, 2GB of DDR4 RAM (expandable to 6GB), both 2.5Gb and 1Gb LAN ports, and two USB 3.0 ports.

With only two bays, RAID options include Synology Hybrid RAID, Basic, JBOD, RAID 0, and RAID 1. The one major drawback: there’s no support for an expansion unit if you need more storage down the line.