thunderbolt 3 external ssd hard drive for mac

The USB 3-dot-whatever Gen-whatever stuff is, frankly, ridiculous and confusing. And then there’s Thunderbolt 1, 2 or 3 (with Thunderbolt 4 coming out soon). Some use a USB-A connection and they’re USB 2.0 or 3.0, most now are USB-C with USB 3.0, 3.1 Gen 1, 3.1 Gen 2, 3.2, and I think USB 4 is coming out soon. Most these days are SSDs while plenty still have spinning disk drives.

You’ve got your Seagates, you’ve got your Western Digitals, you’ve got your LaCie’s (which Seagate now owns), you’ve got your G-Drives (which Western Digital now owns), you’ve got your Samsungs, and you’ve got your SanDisks (which Western Digital owns). They’re powered by the computer they’re connected to. Next, there’s PORTABLE, BUS-POWERED EXTERNAL DRIVES - bus-powered meaning you don’t need to plug them into the wall to use them. So for the purposes of this article, I’m going to cover only with EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES. And if you’re using a Mac Pro, you’re most likely working with footage that’s 4K and above and, sadly, 2TB is simply too little storage to handle those high res workflows (unless you’re editing off-line with proxy media, of course). For those of you who popped on a new Mac Pro or are still rocking a Cheese Grater, you can add internal hard drives to your tower and work off those - this is a GREAT option but can be very expensive when looking at capacities above 2TB. Most these days are SSDs, but I know a few of you out there are probably still rocking the ol’ Fusion Drive on your iMac.

Whether you edit on a laptop or desktop computer, you’re going to have an internal hard drive. A chart breaking down the four different types of video editors.īut before we get into that, let’s break down the different types of hard drives you might be considering for your arsenal.įirst, there’s INTERNAL HARD DRIVES.

Thunderbolt 3 external ssd hard drive for mac