The best external SSDs are much more affordable than they used to be. Unlike the external HDDs of old, today's external SSDs are genuinely speedy—sometimes enough to compete with internal SSDs. This all depends on what USB generation your system supports, though. If you're limited to an older generation, you won't be able to make the most of some of the best external SSDs for gaming.
The Adata SD810 is the best overall external SSD, as it offers simply amazing price to performance and can maintain its peak sequential transfer speeds for a very long time. The Crucial X6 is still the best budget external SSD, as it's pretty consistently on sale and has a new iteration out that runs even faster than the first one.
Whether you're looking to expand your storage for your desktop PC, handheld gaming PC, or console, using an external SSD is a convenient way to do so. Depending on which drive you opt for, you might also get something that's genuinely portable in a way that the older external drives never were. Whatever your use case, there should be something that fits the bill listed below.
Jacob is PC Gamer's external SSD expert. He admires the simple brilliance of external SSDs which seem to get consistently smaller and faster year by year. He's been testing the latest and greatest portable drives for the past few months and knows what makes them tick.
The Quick List
The best overall
The SD810 offers some fantastic transfer speeds for a very reasonable cost. The icing on the cake is that it's also a dinky little drive that's dust- and water-resistant, making it very portable. It's simply a stellar all-rounder and should satisfy most gamers.
The best budget
The X6 has been updated to be even speedier than its first iteration. It's been out a while, but given it's pretty consistently on sale, it's one of the best cheap external SSDs on the market. It's a previous-gen drive but it should be fast enough for most purposes.
The fastest
Not everyone will be able to use this drive because it requires a USB 4 port. However, if you have such a port, the SE920 is incredibly speedy. You do have to enable on-drive write caching, which could risk data loss over unstable connections, but if it's raw speed you want, this is it.
The best premium
The T9 is premium in every way. It achieves fast peak transfer speeds, and when speeds drop they remain consistently high. It's also rugged and pleasantly weighty, meaning you don't have to worry about accidental bumps or drops.
The best portable
The PD20 is a portable SSD that's so small it might as well be a USB flash drive. It doesn't maintain peak speeds for as long as some other drives, but it does for up to about 50 GB worth of sequential transfers and is incredibly easy to carry around. If you're looking for a dinky drive, this is it.
The best durable
The T7 Shield has been out for a while, but it's still the most rugged and durable drive out there. Somewhat dust- and water-resistant, it has a hefty protective rubber casing. Oh, and it has some solid internals that allow for consistent transfer speeds, too.
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The best for backups
The Desk Drive is meant to remain, well, on your desk. Less of a portable drive and more of an external backup or media storage solution, it's reliable, consistent, and capacious.
Recent updates
Updated October 18, 2024 to add performance charts throughout this now completely overhauled guide to the best external SSDs. I've been testing the latest and greatest portable drives for the past few months and have decided on the very best for inclusion in this guide.
The best overall external SSD for gaming
✅ You want a speedy drive for a reasonable price: The SD810 offers some of the best current-gen speeds around without breaking the bank.
✅ You want a genuinely portable drive: This SSD is small and dust- and water-resistant, making it a great choice for carrying around on your travels.
❌ You don't have a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port: Without being plugged into such a port, this drive won't be able to achieve anything near its rated speeds.
The Adata SD810 is the best external SSD for gaming because it hits the crucial balance between price and performance for most use cases. It's a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drive, meaning it offers up to rated speeds of 2,000 MB/s, and in my testing, I found that it hits close to this rated speed for longer than most other reasonably priced drives of the same generation.
Provided you have a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port, the SD810 should offer more than enough for the majority of gamers looking to expand their storage with a portable solution. When I set it to work in the IOMeter testing tool, it managed to transfer over 250 GB of data in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds before the pseudo-SLC cache ran out and speeds dropped. 250 GB will cover most uses, don't you think?
And a portable SSD it certainly is. It's a dinkier drive than most, making it easily pocketable for all your travels. The icing on the cake is that it's IP68 dust- and water-protected, thanks to a pop-off cap keeping the USB-C port safe and snug. This makes it doubly portable, since you won't have to worry about getting caught in the rain or taking it to a very sandy beach—you know, as you do.
It also works well as a drive to host all your game installs, which is useful if you're looking to expand your handheld gaming PC storage, for instance. It holds it with the best of them in this regard—even the super-premium Samsung T9—keeping load times low and gameplay stutter-free. Its wonderful temperature regulation surely helps in this regard.
You'll only find a downside to this drive if you're looking to do some hefty transfers on the reg. If you're looking for an external drive for full-system backups, for instance, you'll be better off with something like the SanDisk Desk Drive.
In pretty much any other use case, though, the Adata SD810 should serve you well. It's a fantastic, light, small, and speedy external SSD with some cracking extra features for an eminently reasonable cost.
Read our full Adata SD810 review.
The best budget external SSD for gaming
✅ You're on a budget: The Crucial X6 is on offer so often that it might as well have a permanent discount price. It's incredible value, even if it isn't the fastest drive around.
❌ You'll be doing big transfers: If you're regularly transferring hundreds of GB of data, this drive might make things tedious. You'd be better looking for a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drive if your system has a USB port that supports it.
We've long recommended the Crucial X6 as the best budget external SSD for gaming, and part of the reason we can keep doing so is because Crucial's updated the drive to keep it more in-line with modern speeds.
Originally, it was rated up to 540 MB/s, but the more recent versions that are retailing push up to 800 MB/s, which is much closer to the theoretical maximum of the USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 connection.
Make no mistake, 3.2 Gen 2x1 is the USB generation to go for if you want a budget price without sacrificing too much performance. And the X6 offers the best bang for your buck, as far as I can tell.
The X6 seems to be consistently on sale, and provided that keeps up, we can continue to recommend it as a budget option. As it stands, per GB of capacity, the X6 is better value than others of its ilk. Yes, some other 3.2 Gen 2x1 drives might offer an extra 200 MB/s max rated speed, but they're not likely to hit that, and if you're going to spend more on that you might as well step up to 3.2. Gen 2x2.
As far as gaming's concerned, the X6 shouldn't struggle. Even the slower first-gen version I tested wasn't disastrously behind other more expensive drives in the 3DMark Storage and FFXIV gaming benchmarks I tested it in. The newer version should fare even better.
Provided it steers firmly towards a $0.06-per-GB sale price, the Crucial X6 is a stellar option for those in the market for a cheap external SSD.
The fastest external SSD for gaming
✅ You'll use it as your primary game drive: If you're planning on using an external SSD as your primary game drive, it makes sense to go for one that can approach a sliver of the performance of an internal SSD.
❌ You have an unstable USB connection: There's a risk you'll lose or corrupt your data if your connection's unstable because the SE920 must have its on-drive write cache enabled to transfer files at even normal speeds.
The Adata SE920 is the fastest external SSD for gaming, but just make sure you need all that speed before you go dropping a wad of cash on it. I'm being very up-front with this warning not just because this thing's incredibly expensive—which it is—but because it comes with a big caveat.
To achieve the SE920's blistering speeds (rated at 3,800 MB/s) you must enable on-drive write caching. In fact, to achieve speeds faster than a snail's pace you must enable this.
This essentially means you're taking control of how your SSD's data is directed away from your system (your PC's RAM) and into the hands of the external SSD. This means that if there's problem with the USB connection and its power delivery, you risk corrupting or losing your data. Yeah... there's a reason I called the SE920 a "glass cannon" in my review.
Glass or not, it is still a cannon, and this was demonstrated over and over in every test and benchmark I put the drive through. It's a super-quick USB 4 SSD that leaves all the other drives on this list in its wake.
It achieves such speeds in part thanks to its cooling, which involves its seemingly gimmicky but actually somewhat useful press-to-expand casing and active cooling. You push down on the edge of the SSD and it pops open a little to aid airflow, and a mini fan boots up. I didn't find this feature to improve peak speeds, but it did allow the drive to hit those peak speeds more often during big transfers.
Plus, the cooling should help for gaming, which is another area in which the SE920 excels. If you want a drive to house and run your game installs from, this drive's as fast as you'll get. It beat all the others I tested handily in 3DMark Storage and FFXIV benchmarks. In practice, this will make for faster loading times in games. It isn't as quick a decent internal SSD, but it's not too far behind, either.
Of course, none of this matters if you don't have a USB 4 port, so ensure you have one of those before spending the money on this powerful but somewhat risky and very expensive external SSD. Without this, the drive won't be fast at all.
If your PC has a USB port that can make good use of it, however, buckle up tightly because the SE920 truly is blazingly fast.
Read our full Adata SE920 review.
The best premium external SSD for gaming
✅ You do lots of big file transfers: If you're transferring hundreds of GB at a time, the T9 should keep things nice and speedy throughout.
✅ You aren't delicate: The T9 is a pretty rugged drive and should be able to handle most bumps and scrapes.
❌ You don't do big all-in-one transfers: If you're transferring less than a couple-hundred GB of data at a time, other cheaper USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drives might do so just as quickly and be better value.
The Samsung T9 is the best premium external SSD for gaming because its quality in-house components (its 3D NAND flash memory and Pablo Controller) guarantee a level of consistency you don't see in most other portable drives.
Usually, after a minute or two, a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drive like this one will drop down to very slow (sub-200 MB/s) speeds. Not so with the T9. In my testing, I found it to transfer files consistently above 900 MB/s after the initial 1 minute and 30 seconds of peak (1,800~ MB/s) speeds. This speaks to the premium quality of the T9's internal components and cooling, and it translates to a consistent and reliable experience regardless of how much you have to transfer.
Samsung knows this is a premium product, too, which is reflected in its design. It's not the smallest drive on the market—it's certainly no TeamGroup PD20 or even an Adata SD810—but it's hella smooth. Well, figuratively, because it's actually got a stylish rubber casing that helps deliver on its 3-meter drop-proof promise. It has a nice weight to it, too, while remaining easily pocketable. And that's just what you want from a premium drive. It's one you won't be embarrassed to pull out in the cafe, that's for sure.
Just don't go dropping it in water or a sand dune, because despite its great rugged casing, it's not rated against water and dust ingression. Which is a little disappointing for a device that's decidedly premium in every other way.
Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, the Samsung T9 does also come with a premium price tag. Proportionally, the 4 TB version that I tested is the best of the bunch in the value department given its seemingly unchanging discounted price, but the 1 TB and 2 TB versions do come with a significant premium tax.
What, did we expect to get such high quality internals and consistent speeds for free? It's certainly worth the money, but that doesn't mean it's the best choice for everyone. A cheaper drive such as the SD810 will suffice for most, but for those who want that extra level of quality, the T9's where it's at.
Read our full Samsung T9 review.
The most portable external SSD for gaming
✅ You want a USB flash drive replacement: The PD20 gets close to being as small as your typical USB flash drive, and it can even be added to your keychain.
❌ You'll regularly transfer more than 50 GB at a time: After transferring 50 GB of data, the PD20 can slow down significantly.
The TeamGroup PD20 is the most portable external SSD, and that's not all it has going for it. It's also a decent performer for something that's housed in an almost USB flash drive-sized package.
In fact, the PD20 sacrifices surprisingly little to attain such a small form factor. Sure, it doesn't maintain its peak speeds for as long as other drives, this doubtless being because it gets hotter and throttles performance quicker due to less room for cooling. But apart from that? There's very little not to like.
The PD20 has portability in mind, and it has everything you might want from a portable SSD. First off, it looks great and feels good to hold, meaning you won't have to be embarrassed taking it out and about. It even has a stylish little hoop at the top end so you can keychain it, making it a veritable stand-in for the USB flash drives of old.
Perhaps surprisingly considering most other drives don't have this, the PD20 has an IP54 rating, meaning it has at least some protection from dust and water. This is because it has a pop-out flap that plugs up the USB-C port. It's a little fiddly, sometimes, but it works.
Ultimately, though, what you want from a portable drive is something small that delivers acceptable performance, and that's exactly what you get with the TeamGroup PD20. I can't go further than "acceptable", though, because it doesn't maintain its peak speeds for very long compared to other USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 drives.
Nevertheless, it is Gen 2x2, which means those peaks are pretty high. In my testing, I found it to peak just shy of 1,800 MB/s for almost 30 seconds, meaning it does 50 GB transfers in about 30 seconds. That's enough for many people's needs, especially for those looking for something so portable.
I wouldn't use this as a primary drive to run your games from—I suspect its high temps might cause problems when using it as a main game drive—but for most other use cases it's a fantastic little SSD that you can easily take with you on the go.
Read our full TeamGroup PD20 SSD review.
The best durable external SSD for gaming
✅ You're clumsy: The T7 Shield can survive most bumps, scrapes, drops, and splashes, so it's great for those who are all thumbs.
✅ You want to transfer large files: This portable SSD maintains a consistent transfer speed, meaning its speed shouldn't drop off during large file transfers.
❌ You want current-gen speeds: Yes, the T7 Shield offers consistent speads, but it lacks the initial minute or two of 1,800~ MB/s speeds that current-gen 3.2 Gen 2x2 drives offer.
It's been out for a while now, but the Samsung T7 Shield is still the best durable SSD for gaming. I was hoping the newer Samsung T9 would take its place because it also has a rugged casing and is rated to be drop-proof up to three meters. However, the T9 doesn't have the T7 Shield's IP65 dust- and water-resistance rating.
The "rugged but also dust- and water-resistant" combination is surprisingly rare in external SSDs, but the T7 Shield has you covered and is the best durable external SSD in this regard. Its pleasing rubber casing keeps it safe from bonks and bashes, and some kind of internal USB-C protection must be going on to give it its IP rating, given it doesn't have a plug or a cap or anything like that.
It's also surprisingly consistent in its sequential transfer speeds, just like the newer T9. The only real difference is that the T9 has that initial 3.2 Gen 2x2 peak speed boost, which lasts for about a minute and a half. Apart from this initial boost on the T9's part, both the T9 and T7 Shield delivered close to 1,000 MB/s transfer speed throughout my IOMeter tests.
The T7 Shield delivers similarly stellar gaming performance, even beating some current-gen (3.2 2x2) USB drives such as the PD20 Mini in the 3DMark Storage benchmark I tested the drives with.
In other words, the T7 Shield seems to be of similar premium quality to the wonderful T9 but lacks the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 peak transfer speeds and super snappy RND4K performance. It's a premium drive, and this is reflected in its price tag, as it tends to cost slightly more than cheaper current-gen drives such as the Adata SD810.
For this extra cost, however, you get not just a rugged and durable drive, but one with premium components that deliver consistent performance.
Read our full Samsung T7 Shield review.
The best external SSD for backups
✅ You want full-system backups: With external power delivery and incredibly reliable and consistent transfer speeds, the Desk Drive is great for big backups. It even comes with some system backup software.
✅ You want to use it to store tons of media or games: If you have a game or media library that runs into the terabytes, the capacious Desk Drive might be for you.
❌ You want something very portable: Needless to say, the "Desk" Drive isn't the smallest external drive. It requires a power brick to use, too.
❌ You want current-gen speeds: If you want to do super-fast transfers of 50-250 GB, there are better options on this list, such as the Adata SD810 or even the somewhat excessive Adata SE920 if you have a USB 4 port.
The SanDisk Desk Drive is the best external SSD for backups because it's incredibly capacious and impressively consistent. This shouldn't surprise us too much, though, given it pretty explicitly goes after this backup market.
It's a "Desk Drive" because it's meant to sit on your desk semi-permanently, for backups or mass media storage. It even comes with Acronis True Image backup software, downloadable by following a link to the Western Digital site (WD owns SanDisk). This thing knows it's not a mainstream portable SSD and it doesn't try to be.
When it comes to its intended function as a backup or mass media storage drive—kind of like a NAS replacement—the Desk Drive fires on all cylinders. Not only does it have external power delivery for extra stability but it also delivers the most consistent sequential transfers of any drive I've tested, achieving a consistent 930-935 MB/s speed throughout a 30-minute IOMeter run transferring over 1.6 TB of data. This consistency is important for backups and mass storage because it means you know exactly what you'll be getting the entire way through.
This consistency is no doubt aided by power being delivered externally rather than over USB, which also helps its gaming performance. I was initially very surprised to find that the Desk Drive runs games off of it better—ie, with faster loading times—than even newer-generation drives such as the Samsung T9 and Adata SD810. Combine these things and you have an external drive for very big game libraries, which is a niche but legit use case.
It also looks great, which is no small matter for a drive that's meant to stay on your desk. Other drives such as the T9 also look great, but none that look so much like they belong on your desk as a permanent addition. Its puck-like design is quite satisfying to pick up and lug around, too.
Just don't expect to be doing any of this lugging without first creating some room in your backpack. It's not exactly a small drive, and you'll have to carry around its power brick, too.
It's not cheap, but if you're looking to do full-system backups, store lots of important media or other large files, or perhaps even a gigantic game library, the SanDisk Desk Drive is a very reliable external SSD that should serve you well.
Read our full SanDisk Desk Drive review.
Also tested
Where to buy
In the US
- Amazon - Discounts galore on top-brand external SSDs
- Walmart - 2TB external SSDs at low prices
- B&H Photo - Save hundreds on portable storage
- Best Buy - Deals on Seagate, Samsung, and WD external drives
- Target - Masses of big brand USB external SSDs
- Newegg - Big savings to be found on portable drives
In the UK
- Amazon - Tons of USB external HDDs on offer
- Scan - Get a 1TB external drive for just £75
- Ebuyer - All the top brands for USB external drives
- Argos - WD, Samsung, and Seagate external drives for PCs
- CCL - Discounts on some of the best external SSDs
External SSD FAQ
Should I buy an NMVe or SATA external SSD?
Previously, most external SSDs were SATA ones that peaked at around 540 MB/s. These days, however, most are NVMe and can reach up to about 3,800 MB/s, depending on the USB-C generation in question.
And yes, I said USB-C, because regardless of which drive you go for, that's the connection you'll be looking at. There are some USB 4 (40 Gbps) drives out there, but these aren't too common, and for the most part, you'll be looking for a USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 (10 Gbps) or USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) external SSD.
There's no point opting for the latter if you don't have a USB port that supports it, though, so make sure your system supports the standard of whatever drive you're buying to make the most of it.
What type of NAND flash should I go for?
Interface specification isn’t the only deciding factor when it comes to performance. Features like controller specification and the type and quality of NAND flash used are also important, though it’s not always easy to identify the finer details. Many manufacturers are reluctant to quote full specifications. For instance, drives with four-level QLC NAND memory will tend to have worse underlying performance than those with triple-layer TLC memory.
Form factor and other frills should also be part of your calculations. Some drives are built to be particularly robust; others include extras like hardware encryption, status LEDs, or even fingerprint scanners for added security. Some of those features are fairly tangential to the basic remit of providing high-performance storage space for a games library. But you might also be looking for a drive that can serve more than one role.
How we test external SSDs
What one person considers to be important about external SSDs, the next might not. Some might care more about portability and durability, others might care about gaming performance, and others may care more about transfer speeds.
Example of IOMeter sequential pseudo-SLC cache testing.
When we test external SSDs, we try to look objectively at all of these things, using benchmark and test data as well as our personal experiences using them. To test transfer speeds, we use the CrystalDiskMark 7 benchmark and IOMeter test suite.
To test gaming performance, we primarily use two FFXIV loading time benchmarks and the 3DMark Storage benchmark, which simulates real-world gaming events such as the time taken to load popular games (higher is better for Index and Bandwidth, whereas lower is better for Average Access Time).
Apart from these tests, we also ensure we actually use the drives for a while, transferring files to and from them and even running games off of them. We also test their durability, to different extents depending on the drive in question. I'm certainly not going to yeet the 'DinkyTiny Fragile 1 TB' external SSD down the hallway for a laugh, nor for testing. But a desk-height drop should be standard fare for any SSD, and thankfully I've not had one fail the desk drop test yet.
Ultimately, all these different tests and personal experiences come together to form a cohesive picture of the pros and cons of a drive. From there, we know whether we can recommend it or not, and if so then for which use cases.
