RAM: This is the laptop’s main memory where programs and files are stored.

These will cost more for the storage space, so a medium sized SSD of around 1 TB will be significantly more expensive than a hard drive of a similar size. The price of an external hard drive can vary from anything between £50 to £250 for medium sized drives of between 1 TB and 4 TB. More expensive, faster hard drives can cost £250 or more, while seriously large and powerful hard drives can cost several hundred pounds. Most cheaper hard drives will have a fairly modest read/write speed of around 100 to 150 MB per second, not brilliant if you want to load or transfer lots of large video files.īetter hard drives will offer zippier speeds of 400 MB per second or better, although the prices will start to stack up at this range. Read speed is essentially how long it takes to upload files from your head drive, while write speed is how long it takes to save something to the drive. To keep your files safe you may want to buy a more rugged hard drive. ReliabilityĪlthough hard drives tend to be pretty reliable there are few comprehensive reviews of how reliable drives are over a long time under strain, and nobody wants to loose years of cherished photos or videos.ĭata from Backblaze shows Hitachi and Western Digital drives had some of the lowest failure rates last year, although these stats are largely limited to internal drives. Other forms of connection include wireless transfer to the hard drive. Until recently, most hard drives connected with USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 connections, but now many are moving over to USB-C, which offers 10 Gps of transfer speed, equivalent to twice the speed on offer from USB 3.0. Fortunately, hard drive storage is not that expensive to add, and a 4 TB hard drive will set you back less than £200 from some brands. If you are a video editor or a photographer you may want several terabytes of storage. Smaller hard drives have less than 1 TB of storage, not much more than you get in some laptops. These are smaller and more expensive but offer faster boot up for files and programs, ideal for use inside a slim and powerful ultrabook or notebook. The most well-known hard drive brands include Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba and Hitachi, while others such as Samsung, SanDisk and G-Tech also offer sleek and powerful external storage or solid state drives. Its data transfer rate is a respectable 100 MB per second and at just 159g it makes for an ideal portable option.

Although Seagate has been known to make drives with less than average reliability, they are among the cheapest external hard drives you can buy. Offering 1 TB of storage it can be used with PC or Mac. This smaller drive is one of the most popular and best value out there. Seagate's smaller drives are reliable and speedy and offer great value for money.

Seagate external hard drive macbook air