Best external drive for PC backup in 2023 (original) (raw)

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Table of Contents

• Products at a Glance
• Product Reviews
  • Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB External Hard Drive
  • Seagate Backup Plus Slim
  • ioSafe Solo G3 4TB
• Our Verdict

If you’re looking for the best external drive for backing up your PC, you’ve come to the right place.

Whether it’s family photos and videos, creative projects, financial records, work documents or other important personal files, we keep more and more of our crucially important files on our computers, and to ensure those files are properly protected, it’s an extremely good idea to have some kind of external backup for those files.

An external USB hard drive is one of the quickest and most secure ways of storing your files away from your computer. You can keep it connected for regular backups, or for the most sensitive data you can connect it to perform a backup, and then easily take it to a remote location or a safe.

Keeping a hard drive connected will protect you from technical faults preventing you from accessing files that would otherwise only be saved on your computer, or storing the hard drive in a separate location can protect you from losing those files in the event of a burglary or fire.

Cloud backups are one option, but you can’t match the security of having physical control of access to those files since cloud backups can and do get compromised in cases where hackers have been able to gain unauthorized access to your account.