You just spent two thousand dollars on a MacBook Pro with a Liquid Retina display and a chip that can probably calculate the trajectory of a Mars landing. Then you see the price for an internal storage upgrade. It’s highway robbery. Apple’s "SSD tax" is legendary, often charging hundreds of extra dollars just to jump from 512GB to 1TB. Naturally, you head to Amazon or Best Buy to find an external hard drive for apple computer use, thinking it’s a simple plug-and-play situation.
It isn't.
I’ve seen dozens of people buy a "Mac-ready" drive, plug it in, and then wonder why their Time Machine backups are failing or why they can’t drag a 5GB video file onto the disk. The reality is that the bridge between macOS and external hardware is paved with formatting quirks, cable bottlenecks, and confusing marketing jargon. If you pick the wrong drive, you aren't just losing speed—you might be risking your data.
The APFS vs. ExFAT Headache
Formatting is where most people trip up immediately. When you buy a drive, it usually comes pre-formatted as ExFAT or NTFS. Windows loves NTFS. macOS can read NTFS, but it can’t write to it without third-party software like Paragon or Tuxera. If you leave your drive in NTFS, it’s basically a paperweight you can look at but not touch.
ExFAT is the "universal" choice. It works on both PC and Mac. It’s convenient. But honestly? It’s also fragile. ExFAT doesn't have metadata journaling. This means if you accidentally pull the cable out before "ejecting" the drive properly, there is a significantly higher chance of directory corruption compared to Apple's native formats.
For anything staying strictly in the Apple ecosystem, you want APFS (Apple File System).
APFS was designed specifically for solid-state storage. It’s fast. It handles snapshots beautifully. If you’re using an older mechanical spinning drive for long-term cold storage, you might stick with Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but for 90% of modern users, APFS is the gold standard. I’ve seen users try to run a Time Machine backup on an ExFAT drive and spend three hours wondering why the "Select Disk" menu is empty. macOS requires APFS or HFS+ for backups. No exceptions.
Stop Buying HDD if You Value Your Sanity
Let’s talk about the "spinning rust" versus SSD debate. Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) are cheap. You can get a 5TB Seagate Portable for a fraction of the cost of a 2TB SSD. If you are just dumping photos from 2014 that you’ll never look at again, go for the HDD.
But if you are a creative professional—or even just someone who hates watching a progress bar crawl—an HDD is a nightmare.
Mechanical drives usually peak at around 120MB/s. That sounds fast until you realize a modern MacBook’s internal drive is hitting 5,000MB/s or more. When you try to edit a 4K video directly off a cheap external HDD, your Mac will stutter. It’ll feel like the computer is broken. It’s not the computer; it’s the bottleneck of a physical disk spinning at 5,400 RPM inside a plastic case.
Why NVMe Matters
If you decide to go the SSD route, you’ll see two types: SATA and NVMe.
- SATA SSDs (like the older Samsung T5) cap out around 500MB/s.
- NVMe SSDs (like the Samsung T7 or SanDisk Extreme) can hit 1,000MB/s to 2,800MB/s.
The price difference is shrinking. Honestly, buying a SATA-based external drive in 2026 feels like buying a flip phone. It works, but why would you?
The Thunderbolt 3 and 4 Trap
This is the most technical part, but stay with me because it saves you money. Just because a cable has a USB-C connector doesn't mean it’s fast. This is the great lie of modern tech.
👉 See also: Saturn's Rings: Why They Are Actually Disappearing (and What We Get Wrong)
Apple uses Thunderbolt ports that look like USB-C. You might buy a high-end Thunderbolt 4 drive expecting 40Gbps speeds, only to find it performs exactly like a cheap $40 drive. Why? Because you used the charging cable that came with your MacBook. That white cable Apple gives you in the box? It’s mostly for power. Its data transfer speeds are stuck at USB 2.0 levels—basically stone-age tech.
To get the most out of an external hard drive for apple computer setups, you need a cable with the little lightning bolt icon on it. If you’re doing heavy video editing or moving 100GB folders daily, the OWC Envoy Pro FX or the LaCie-style rugged Thunderbolt drives are the industry standard for a reason. They use the PCIe bus directly. It’s basically like plugging a piece of the Mac’s brain directly into the side of the machine.
Reliability Scandals You Should Know
We can't talk about external storage without addressing the elephant in the room: the SanDisk firmware disaster. Over the last couple of years, many 2TB and 4TB SanDisk Extreme Pro SSDs started failing. Suddenly. Completely. Data gone.
Western Digital (who owns SanDisk) eventually released firmware updates, but the trust was broken for many pros. This is why you see so many people recommending the Samsung T7 Shield or the Crucial X10 Pro lately. Even the best brands have bad batches.
Always check the "manufactured date" if you can. If you're buying a drive for mission-critical work, the consensus among tech YouTubers and Mac power users has shifted toward DIY builds. You buy an Acasis or Satechi NVMe enclosure and pop in a Western Digital Black or Samsung 990 Pro internal blade. It’s often cheaper, faster, and you know exactly what’s inside.
Bus Power and Hubs
Modern Macs are great at powering small portable drives. However, if you start daisy-chaining multiple HDDs through a cheap, non-powered USB hub, you’re going to have a bad time.
You’ll hear a "click-click-click" sound. That’s the sound of a mechanical drive trying to spin up and failing because it isn't getting enough juice. If you have a desktop setup with an iMac or a Mac Mini, get a powered hub. It saves your logic board from unnecessary stress and prevents "Disk Not Ejected Properly" errors that occur when the power fluctuates.
How to Actually Set Up Your New Drive
When you get your drive, don't just start dragging files. Do this instead:
- Open Disk Utility (Command + Space, then type it).
- Click "View" in the top left and select "Show All Devices." This is crucial. You want to erase the whole physical disk, not just the volume.
- Select the top-level name of your external drive.
- Click Erase.
- Name it whatever you want, but for Format, choose APFS. For Scheme, choose GUID Partition Map.
- Hit Erase.
Now your Mac treats that drive like a native extension of itself.
Actionable Steps for Choosing Your Drive
Don't overthink it, but don't under-spend either. Here is the move:
- For the Budget Conscious: Get a Samsung T7 (non-Shield version). It’s tiny, reliable, and plenty fast for 99% of people.
- For the Rough-and-Tumble Traveler: The Samsung T7 Shield or the LaCie Rugged SSD. These can survive a drop and a splash of coffee.
- For the Video Editor: Look for "USB 3.2 Gen 2x2" or "Thunderbolt 4" labels. The SanDisk Desk Drive (the big desktop version) is actually quite stable compared to their portables, or better yet, a RAID enclosure from G-Technology.
- For the Backup Purist: Buy two cheap 8TB Western Digital Elements. Use one for Time Machine and keep the other at your office or a friend's house. Rotate them.
The best external hard drive for apple computer is the one you actually use. Don't wait until your Mac says "Disk Full" to figure this out. By then, the OS is already slowing down because it has no "swap" space to breathe. Buy a drive that is at least double your internal storage capacity. If you have a 512GB Mac, get a 1TB SSD. You’ll thank yourself in six months when you aren't deleting old photos just to download a macOS update.
Check your current storage usage in System Settings > General > Storage. If the "System Data" or "macOS" bars are taking up more than 100GB, it's time to offload your user folders to an external source. Clear the clutter, format to APFS, and keep that expensive Apple hardware running lean.