

If possible, try to replace your backup drives between the third and sixth years of use.

Capacity: We focus on 4 TB and 5 TB hard drives because of the balance they strike between value and total cost.Price: Although we consider drives of all prices, we limit our testing to models priced below $150, and we compare their value on a dollar-per-terabyte basis.Performance: We evaluate each drive with tests that replicate different real-world uses.We dismiss drives built exclusively for Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 because they cost too much and don’t perform noticeably better for most people.

Input: We consider drives with a variety of USB port types-USB Type-B, Micro-B, or Type-C-but regardless of the port, we look at only those drives that support the most current USB standard, USB 3.2 Gen 2.
