7 Best Cheap External Hard Drives in 2024

Affordable and high-quality cheap external hard drives.

Save a ton of money while receiving impressive functionality by getting the best cheap external hard drive the market has to offer. Such a device provides amazing value for money while representing the ideal backup option for both casual and professional purposes. You can use an external hard drive for extra storage when you don’t have enough space on the PC or laptop, or for backing up your most important data in case anything happens to your internal drives.

The best cheap external hard drive should offer a lot of speed, be highly reliable, and spacy enough to fit all the data you can’t or don’t want to keep in your cloud storage account. Finally, such an HDD or SDD can be a great tool for creating a system backup should anything happen to your PC or laptop.

Compatibility: 2 TB | Interface: USB 3.0/2.0 | Speed: 5 Gb/s / 120 Mb/s

The Seagate STGX2000400 external hard drive one is one of the most popular and most sold products on the market at the present time. With the USB 3.0 connection, you can connect the hard drive and start working right away. There is no waiting for a program to download or any other issues.

This external hard drive with 2 TB capacity allows you to store and transfer large amounts of data. This can be done quickly, easily, and efficiently. With backup software you can store and back up all of your information in one safe place. No matter what you use your computer for, it is hard drive can be counted on for reliable performance.

Compatibility: 2 TB | Interface: USB 3.0/2.0 | Speed: 5 Gb/s / 480 Mb/s

The Seagate STHN2000402 external hard drive can be connected to your laptop via a USB port for easy sharing of work files. This great product can help you access your files easily and quickly no matter where you are. Whether for business or personal use, this hard drive offers many features that will keep even the most savvy user happy.

The hard drive simplifies backing up your data to protect your entire digital existence locally, on the internet, from portable devices or even from social networking sites. The small, lightweight metal casing allows you to slip the drive into your handbag, purse or back pocket easily and carry it with you everywhere.

Compatibility: 2 TB | Interface: USB 3.0 | Speed: 5 Gb/s

The Toshiba Canvio Basics external hard drives offer a number of benefits that cannot be found with other portable hard drive, allowing consumers to keep all of their important information safe and easily accessible at all times.

Keeping data storage easy, the Canvio Basics allows you to bring all your collections together with its compact portability and ease of access, providing high storage space, easy installation, and quick access to all stored information. With a super-thin design, easy to use operation, and a number of built-in features, this external hard drive provide an excellent value for the money with its many advantages.

Compatibility: 2 TB | Interface: USB 3.0 | Speed: 5 Gb

Silicon Power 2TB Armor A60 external hard drives are the ideal solution for your data storage requirements. The drive offers high levels of data storage space and speed. These drives are the perfect blend of high performance and high storage space.

Some of the most important features that integrated in this storage device include shock resistance, portability, cable-carry design, password protection, data recovery and data formatting features. In order to make your device reliable and long lasting, all these factors are integrated in a single device. The anti-slip surface of the drive provides a safe environment for transporting it as well.

Compatibility: 2 TB | Interface: USB 3.0/2.0 | Speed: 5 Gb/s / 480 Mb/s

The Western Digital WDBU6Y0020BBK external hard drive offers data security in the form of data encryption, which keeps information safe even while on the go. This is great for just about everything you can imagine needing a storage unit for.

Even if you just need a little more space for a photo or some other file that you tend to keep on your desktop all the time, this is the way to go. If you are the kind of person that likes to bring things along wherever they go, then this type of hard drive is probably going to be perfect for you.

Compatibility: 1 TB | Interface: USB 3.0/2.0 | Speed: 5 Gb/s / 120 Mb/s

Seagate STHN1000400 external hard drive helps you store all your important data in just one small hard drive with 1TB capacity and offers the best value for money. It is slim, extremely compact, and extremely reliable, thanks to their advanced technology, which makes it ideal for high-end computers.

This small and powerful drive allows you to back up all your files, whether you want to use it for your desktop computer or notebook. It is protecting your files from damage and loss so that you don't have to worry about losing work, personal belongings, important information, and so much more.

Compatibility: 2 TB | Interface: USB 3.0/2.0 | Speed: 5 Gb

Silicon Power 2TB Armor A62 external hard drive comes with a three year warranty and it can be easily connected to the motherboard of a computer or to the USB port for easy installation. This drive does not require installation and operation by a user, which makes it more popular among people who are unfamiliar with the mechanics of computers and its software.

This external hard drive gives you an ample amount of storage for your files and also some bonus features like flexible cable-carry design, waterproof, anti-slip surface, data recovery and a host of other features. The drive also works well with computers running Windows operating system.

The first thing you have to think about when choosing the best cheap external hard drive is the amount of offered storage space. A model that offers hyper-speed and top-tier data encryption is rather useless if it doesn’t provide enough space for the data you need to store.

If your goal is to get a hard drive suitable for moving documents, images, videos, and other file types between devices, or you want to increase the amount of space offered by your laptop or computer, then a midrange 1TB USB hard drive is probably the perfect option.

However, if you want a drive that can store more than that, like your entire movie, photo, or game collection, then you’re going to need a product with a capacity of at least 2TB or more.

Read speed is determined by how fast you can transfer data from the hard drive, while the write speed is determined by the amount of time it takes to transfer files to the drive.

The majority of budget options come with moderate speeds of about 100-150MB per second, which isn’t ideal if you plan to copy plenty of huge videos.

Premium hard drives can offer speeds up to 400MB per second and even more, but you will have to pay for the increased efficiency and it might not always be worth it if you’re tight on funds.

Freshly delivered external hard drives are typically formatted to suit a certain OS. For example, a product formatted for Windows 10 may not initially be fully compatible with MacOS computers, and the same is true the other way around. Moreover, some models can even be formatted for Linux PCs.

Dealing with that issue is quite simple. You can reformat the hard drive or divide it into partitions to make it compatible with your OS. However, if you don’t want to take those few extra steps, simply make sure the product you’re about to buy is formatted to work with your system.