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Best Hardrives For Mac 2018

Best External Hard Drive For Mac 2018 Uk

Best Portable External Hard Drive For Mac 2018

Best Portable Hard Drives For Mac

Best Backup Hard Drive For Mac 2018

Your guide

The Toshiba Canvio Advance isn’t necessarily the best external hard drive for Mac users and definitely in the budget-friendly realm but a solid option nonetheless. It’s available in four different hues in two styles with Classic and Contemporary. The LaCie portable external hard drive is one of the best protected from dust, sand, moisture and physical damage. Its body is made of durable aluminum with a sheath of shockproof rubber coating of a bright orange color, very pleasant to the touch.

Justin Krajeski

Best External Hard Drive For Mac 2018 Uk

“The Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive is one of the fastest hard drives we tested, with a read speed of 150.7 megabytes per second and a write speed of 135.3 MB/s. It’s less expensive per terabyte than most of the competition, and the 4 TB model is a better value than the 3 TB version.”.

This one is the best for MacBook owners. Most portable hard drives are made for Windows. It shouldn’t put off any but the most technophobic Mac owners, but the Toshiba Canvio Premium for Mac is a true plug and play drive.

After 20 hours of new research and testing, we found that the best external desktop hard drive for most people is Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book. The My Book is reliable, fast, and less expensive than the other desktop drives we tested, plus it has enough space for your future storage needs and a long, three-year warranty.

Our pick

4 TB Western Digital My Book

The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.

But all of the desktop drives we tested this year were good. We found the speed differences between them to be small: All but one of our finalists performed within about 20 seconds of one another when transferring a Blu-ray movie, and all completed a Time Machine backup within 4 minutes of one another. Because they perform so similarly, we recommend getting the cheapest desktop hard drive you can find from a trustworthy maker. Right now, that means the 4 TB WD My Book.

Runner-up

WD Elements (4 TB)

Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.

If the 4 TB My Book is out of stock or the price goes up, Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is a great and dependable alternative. The Elements is about as fast as our top pick: In our tests, its average write speed was 7.7 MB/s slower, and it took about 5 seconds longer to transfer a Blu-ray film, but those differences were within the margin of error. At this writing, it costs only 46¢ more per terabyte, but prices fluctuate; if you find the Elements for less than the My Book, it’s a better buy. This model lacks backup software, though, and it has a shorter, two-year warranty.

Also great

WD My Book (8 TB)

The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.

If you need more storage, we recommend the Western Digital 8 TB My Book. The 8 TB My Book is just as reliable as our top pick, and it was about as fast in our Blu-ray and HD Tune tests, but about 4 minutes slower in our Time Machine testing. It’s cheaper per terabyte than the other My Book models, but it still costs around $170 at this writing, so we recommend it only if you know you need that much space.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

4 TB Western Digital My Book

The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.

Runner-up

WD Elements (4 TB)

Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.

Also great

WD My Book (8 TB)

The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.

The research

Why you should trust us

Wirecutter has researched and recommended hard drives since early 2012, and our PC team has over eight years of combined experience testing hard drives and solid-state drives—as your guide, I’ve spent the past two years reviewing hard drives and portable SSDs, too. We’ve collectively put in hundreds of hours researching and testing hard drives over the past few years.

Who this is for

If you’re not backing up the important documents and photos on your computer, you should start. Your computer’s internal drive will stop working someday, and unless your data is backed up, it’ll be gone forever. Fortunately, backing up your data is easy, and getting started takes only a few minutes: Read our advice and set up a system that will back up your files automatically both to an external hard drive and the cloud. Just backing up to one or the other isn’t enough; having both on-site and cloud backups ensures that your data stays safe from localized threats such as fire, theft, or natural disaster, as well as Internet outages or disruptions to the cloud backup provider. A desktop external hard drive is a great local backup for a computer that mostly stays parked on a desk.

You should consider replacing your backup drives between the third and sixth year of use. If your drive dies and you have a cloud backup, you won’t lose data, but restoring from the cloud will take a very long time. According to statistics from cloud backup service Backblaze, hard drives are most likely to fail either within the first 18 months of use or after three years. About 5 percent of drives fail in the first 18 months of use, with the failure rate dipping to about 1.5 percent for another 18 months. At three years of service, the failure rate jumps to almost 12 percent. At four years, the failure rate is 20 percent. Judging from five years of data, Backblaze estimates that more than half of hard drives will last six years.

If you spend most of your time working at one desk, you should get a desktop external drive. But if you frequently move between locations, a portable external drive is the better choice. They’re more expensive per terabyte than bigger desktop models, and they’re a bit slower, but portable hard drives are smaller and lighter than desktop drives and don’t need an additional power adapter. They’re also designed to withstand a little more abuse (although one bump can still lead to failure).

How we picked

A great external desktop hard drive, like the three we found, should be reliable, fast, and inexpensive.Photo: Rozette Rago

Ideally, an external hard drive is something you don’t notice much. It should sit on your desk, quietly spinning away, storing and backing up your data without a lot of setup or ongoing maintenance. These are the features you should look for in a desktop hard drive, in rough order of importance:

Reliability: Although reliability is the most important factor for any storage device, solid information on drive reliability can be hard to come by. Only three companies still manufacture hard drives—Western Digital (which also makes HGST drives), Seagate, and Toshiba—and all of them make reliable drives. But all hard drives die. The vast majority of drives from these major manufacturers will be fine, but it’s still possible to buy a bad egg that will die too soon.

Speed: Most of the drives we’ve tested in 2018 are about the same speed, and we haven’t seen major speed increases in desktop hard drives over the past few years. This round, we considered only those drives with USB 3.0 connections. Anything faster isn’t necessary for hard drives, because they’re limited by disk speed, not the USB interface.

Price: We found that most people buy 4 TB and 8 TB drives by looking at Amazon reviews for our top picks. Although a higher-capacity drive is more cost-effective per terabyte, 8 TB external desktop hard drives are nearly twice as expensive as 4 TB drives, for more storage than most people need. Since many desktop drives nowadays offer similar performance, the less expensive they are, the better.

Capacity: We focused on 4 TB hard drives because of their balance of value and total cost. We also have an 8 TB pick for people who need more storage.

Warranty and customer service: A good warranty is important in case you get a lemon. Most of the external hard drives we tested have two-year warranties, but some have three-year warranties. Responsive customer service is important too, in case you have trouble backing up your data.

Useful software: Backup software is a nice perk, but you can find lots of free alternatives and other great options for online backup services. If you don’t need the extra features such software provides, setting it up on every computer you use isn’t worth the time and effort. Dragging and dropping files works just fine for manual backups, and your OS’s built-in backup utility suffices for automatic ones.

We also made note of drive noise and extra USB ports as we tested the external desktop hard drives. These factors aren’t dealbreakers, but they are good to keep in mind.

How we tested

After narrowing our list of finalists by price and capacity, we tested four 4 TB desktop hard drives and three 8 TB models. For each one, we ran HD Tune Pro, a benchmarking program that tests transfer speeds and access time across the entire disk. You can read a more in-depth explanation of the program at the HD Tune website. We also timed the file transfer of a 45.5 GB rip of a Blu-ray movie from start to finish, running each transfer three times and determining the average to rule out performance hiccups. Finally, we timed how long each external hard drive took to back up with Time Machine on a 2016 MacBook Pro.

To spot any widespread reliability issues, we read through Amazon reviews for each of the drives we tested, and we counted the number of reported drive failures. This method has shortcomings: For one, people are more likely to post a review when they have a problem. Also, because of the limited information available in some reviews, it can be hard to differentiate between hardware failures and software issues or user errors that could cause problems with a drive. About half the drives we tested for this update are new, so they didn’t have many Amazon reviews. But this approach is the best we have for now.

We also looked at Backblaze’s hard drive reliability ratings from 2017, which are based on more than 90,000 drives the company uses in its cloud backup servers. Backup servers are a very different environment than a box on your desk: Bare drives in servers are accessed more often and are subject to more vibrations and more heat, whereas drives in desktop enclosures have more potential points of failure between the power connector, the USB connector, and the USB-to-SATA logic board. Even so, the Backblaze study is the largest, most recent sample of hard drive failures we have access to, and it’s always a fascinating read.

Our pick: WD My Book (4 TB)

Photo: Rozette Rago

Our pick

4 TB Western Digital My Book

The 4 TB My Book is reliable, fast, and cheaper than the competition.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.

Western Digital’s 4 TB My Book is the best desktop hard drive for most people because it’s reliable and it offers the best balance of speed and price. It was about as fast as the competition in all of our tests, it’s the least expensive drive we tested at this writing, and it has a longer warranty (three years) than the other contenders.

Although no hard drive is immune from failure, the WD My Book has proven reliable. We found just 21 reported failures out of 358 Amazon reviews of the 4 TB model, or 6 percent. Backblaze’s 2017 report notes that WD’s 4 TB drives had a low, 2.2 percent annualized failure rate. Neither of these research methods is a perfect indicator of the My Book’s reliability, but they are the best we have.

We tested how fast our 4 TB and 5 TB desktop hard drive contenders could transfer a Blu-ray movie. They all performed similarly, although the Toshiba Canvio was a bit faster than the competition. Shorter bars indicate better performance.

Most of the drives we tested performed similarly, with the 4 TB WD My Book having a slight edge in most of our tests. In our Blu-ray transfer test, all of the 4 TB drives we tested were within the margin of error of one another, but the 5 TB Toshiba Canvio was about 30 seconds faster than the competition. (That drive, however, costs considerably more.)

The 4 TB WD My Book performed a little better than the 4 TB competition in HD Tune read and write tests. The Toshiba Canvio was the fastest (and most expensive) drive we tested. Longer bars indicate better performance.

The 4 TB WD My Book was the fastest drive we tested at creating a backup with Time Machine, although all of the drives we tested were pretty quick. Shorter bars indicate better performance.

In HD Tune testing, the 4 TB WD My Book had a read speed of 143.8 megabytes per second and a write speed of 138.4 MB/s, operating a little faster than most of the competition. And it had the fastest Time Machine backup score of all the 4 TB drives we tested. Most of the drives performed similarly in these tests, except for the 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub, which was notably slower.

The 4 TB My Book is the most cost-effective drive we found at the time of our research and writing. Although prices on hard drives fluctuate frequently, our pick was the least expensive in its competitive field: At the time, it cost around $96, or $24 per terabyte, while the majority of the drives we tested cost more than $100. Because all of the drives we tested are good, though, we recommend you buy the cheapest option available if prices change.

WD backs the 4 TB My Book with a three-year warranty, longer coverage than the competition offers. The drive did not get hot during our testing, and although this My Book occasionally made a low humming noise while we moved files around, we don’t think that’s cause for concern; all of the drives we tested make some noise.

Using the included WD Discovery app, you can import your data from a cloud storage or social media account to your drive. You can also use WD Drive Utilities to check for potential drive failures, major performance problems, and bad sectors on the My Book. (In addition, you can use it to permanently erase all the data on your drive.) You can activate 256-AES encryption by downloading WD’s Security software, enabling it, and setting a password.

Wirecutter staffers have used the WD My Book (in varying capacities) with no issue. Senior editor Nathan Edwards has owned the 6 TB version of the drive for about a year: “It's quieter than my old backup drive and relatively good-looking,” he said. “I don't bother it and it doesn't bother me, and my computer is backed up, so that seems good.”

Runner-up: WD Elements (4 TB)

Photo: Rozette Rago

Runner-up

WD Elements (4 TB)

Western Digital’s 4 TB Elements is about as fast as our top pick, but its warranty doesn’t last as long.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $95.

If the 4 TB My Book is unavailable, or if its price goes up, WD’s 4 TB Elements desktop drive is a great second choice. It’s a reliable drive, although it isn’t quite as fast as our top pick. The difference in transfer time wasn’t substantial in any of our tests, though, and it costs about the same as the My Book per terabyte. It has the same software as our top pick too, but its warranty is only two years—one year less than the My Book’s coverage.

The Elements is about as reliable as the 4 TB My Book. We found just five reported failures out of 168 Amazon reviews for the Elements 4 TB option, giving this external hard drive a 3 percent failure rate. That’s a lower failure rate than our top pick has, but the Elements has roughly half as many reviews at this writing, so the reported failure rate may not be comparable.

In our testing, the Elements was about as quick as the 4 TB My Book, falling behind in our Blu-ray transfer test by only 5 seconds. In HD Tune tests, the Elements had a slightly slower write speed compared with our top pick, but the two models’ read speeds were even. And when we backed up to the Elements with Time Machine, it was the second-fastest drive we tested, falling just behind our top pick.

The WD Elements has a two-year warranty, one year less than our top pick, and it doesn’t come with any backup software. But that omission isn’t a dealbreaker because dragging and dropping files or using some other free backup program is an equally good option. Like our top pick, this drive did not get hot during testing, although it did make a little humming noise from time to time.

If you need more storage: WD My Book (8 TB)

Photo: Rozette Rago

Also great

WD My Book (8 TB)

The 8 TB version of the Western Digital My Book offers reliability, fast transfer speeds, and more storage than our other picks.

Buying Options

*At the time of publishing, the price was $170.

If you want more space—say, you have a ton of large photos or videos or an existing media library and need room to expand in the future—Western Digital’s 8 TB My Book is the best option. Like our top pick, the higher-capacity WD My Book has a low, 6 percent reported failure rate (judging from Amazon reviews), and it performed the best of the three 8 TB options we tested. It’s also less expensive than the other 8 TB drives we tested, and it has the longest warranty. Currently the 8 TB My Book costs about $70 more than our top pick, though, so we recommend it only if you want the extra storage.

(We recommend the similarly performing WD 8 TB Easystore if it’s the same price as—or cheaper than—the 8 TB My Book. Because the Easystore is usually more expensive, we think the My Book is the better 8 TB choice for most people’s needs.)

While reading through 326 Amazon reviews of the 8 TB My Book, we found only 20 reviews—or 6 percent—that mentioned drive failure. This result was better than that for the 8 TB Seagate we tested, which had an 11 percent reported failure rate, or 62 noted failures out of 570 reviews on Amazon. The 8 TB Easystore had a mere 1.25 percent reported failure rate on Best Buy’s site—34 noted failures out of 2,708 reviews—but these results aren’t directly comparable because they’re from different retailers with different demographics and customer review systems.

Although the 8 TB WD My Book was the slowest in our Blu-ray read and write tests, all of the models we tested performed similarly. Shorter bars indicate better performance.

In our Blu-ray transfer tests, the 8 TB WD My Book was quick—it read a large Blu-ray video file in 4 minutes, 28 seconds and wrote that file in 4 minutes, 27 seconds. Although it was technically the slowest of the three 8 TB models we tested in this regard, all three performed within 15 seconds of one another in this test.

The 8 TB WD Easystore was faster than the 8 TB WD My Book in the HD Tune tests—but not by much. Longer bars indicate better performance.

The 8 TB My Book performed well in our HD Tune read and write tests, with results of 134 MB/s and 139.9 MB/s, respectively. It was significantly faster than the Seagate model in this test, but a little slower than the WD Easystore, falling short by 12.3 MB/s on reads and 5 MB/s on writes. The My Book also landed in the middle of the pack when backing up via Time Machine, storing 37.8 GB in 25 minutes, 49 seconds. The Easystore was about 2 minutes faster in this test.

The 8 TB WD My Book was about as fast as the 8 TB Seagate in our Time Machine backup test. The 8 TB WD Easystore was faster than both models by about 2 minutes. Shorter bars indicate better performance.

The 8 TB My Book is cheaper, as of this writing, and available at more retailers than the 8 TB WD Easystore. If you see the price on the Easystore come down, though, it’s worth buying.

The 8 TB My Book includes the same backup software as our top pick. It also comes with a longer warranty than the other 8 TB options we tested, three years of coverage.

The competition

We considered seven external desktop drives for our 2018 round of testing. (Not pictured: WD Easystore.)Photo: Rozette Rago

Every hard drive we tested is adequate for the task of backing up your computer; only minor differences in speed, price, warranty, and included software differentiate them.

The WD Easystore is available in both 4 TB and 8 TB capacities; it’s also available only at Best Buy. While the 4 TB version’s price is often double that of our top picks (around $200), the 8 TB model’s price appears to fluctuate: The 8 TB Easystore cost around $140 while we were researching for this guide, but it costs $300 as of this writing. If you can find it for less than our current 8 TB pick, we encourage you to buy it; this model was the fastest 8 TB external hard drive in our HD Tune tests and Time Machine testing. If not, the small speed difference isn’t worth spending $15 to $130 more than what you would for the 8 TB My Book.

Although Toshiba’s 4 TB Canvio for Desktop is a great desktop hard drive, it’s quite expensive. It outperformed the WD My Book in most of our tests, but it costs nearly $20 more as of this writing. We don’t think the jump in speed is worth spending that much more money for most people, because it didn’t offer a noticeable improvement.

Seagate discontinued our previous top pick, the 4 TB Backup Plus Desktop, in favor of the new Backup Plus Hub.

Seagate’s 4 TB Backup Plus Hub fell behind our top pick in HD Tune testing by 15.8 MB/s on reads and 7 MB/s on writes. Although other external hard drives we tested (such as our runner-up pick) were similarly slow when writing files, none of them were as slow as the Seagate at reading them. The Seagate fell behind our top pick by 3 minutes in our Time Machine testing, and it was around 2.5 minutes slower than our runner-up in that regard. This model is a fine external drive, but because it costs about the same as our main pick and runner-up for slower performance, our picks are a better value.

The 8 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub faced problems similar to those of the 4 TB model. It performed well in Blu-ray testing against our other 8 TB options and did fine in Time Machine tests, but it was notably slow during the HD Tune test. Compared with our 8 TB pick, it was 17.4 MB/s slower in the HD Tune read test, and 31.2 MB/s slower in the write test.

At the time of our research, the Seagate Backup Plus Hub for Mac was around $30 more expensive than the regular Seagate Backup Plus Hub we tested (and $40 more than our top pick). Because the two drives appeared to be the same otherwise, we dismissed them.

The Seagate Expansion Desktop was significantly slower than our top picks when we tested it in late 2016. It also has a shorter, one-year warranty and lacks backup software.

Other drives from G-Tech, LaCie, OWC, and Transcend were too expensive, ranging from $170 to $420 for 4 TB models—1.7 to 4.3 times as much as our top pick. Many suffered from limited availability, too.

Sources

Brian Beach, How long do disk drives last?, Backblaze, November 12, 2013

Andy Klein, Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2017, Backblaze, February 1, 2018

How to buy storage, CNET

Lyle Smith, WD My Book Review, StorageReview.com, October 11, 2016

Dong Ngo, WD My Book (Fall 2016) review, CNET, October 11, 2016

Finding the best external hard drive for your Mac can breathe new life into your workflow. Especially if you have a MacBook, iMac or Mac Mini, you may have limited internal upgrade options. Adding an external hard drive can increase your storage by orders of magnitude, giving you ample room for backups, movie collections, music libraries, ongoing projects and more.

Regardless of whether you will be storing personal memories or files from work, choosing the right Mac external hard drive is vital to protecting your digital valuables. With that in mind, what features are most important in an external hard drive? What are some of the hard drives currently available for your Mac?

Contents

Top 6 External Hard Drives for Mac

WD My Book 3TBSeagate 2TB USB 3.0 Backup Plus Slim PortableLaCie Porsche Design P'9233 3TBWD My Book Thunderbolt Duo 8TBSilicon Power Armor A60Rank#1 - Editor's Choice#2#3#4#5Amazon RatingCapacity3 TB2 TB3 TB8 TB1 TBArchitectureMagnetic hard driveMagnetic Hard DriveMagnetic Hard DriveMagnetic Hard DriveMagnetic Hard DriveFilesystemHFS+HFS+HFS+HFS+UnformattedConnectivityUSB 3.0USB 3.0USB 3.0ThunderboltUSB 3.0Weight2.23 lb4.8 oz2.3 lb5.1 lb8 ozTime Machine SupportSpecial FeaturesHardware encryptionFree 200GB OneDrive StorageAutomatic Eco ModeRAID SupportShockproof and WaterproofPrice$109$119$139$576$58Buy NowBuy NowBuy NowBuy NowBuy Now

#1 Pick WD My Book 3TB

WD My Book Duo Hard Drive, a top hard drive for mac.

The Western Digital My Book (model: WDBFJK0030HBK) for Mac 3TB hard drive offers a good balance of storage, features and speed. With 3TB of storage, the drive is HFS+ formatted out-of-the-box, ensuring compatibility with OS X. It is fully compatible with Time Machine and uses USB 3.0 for its connectivity, ensuring fairly fast I/O. Unfortunately, Western Digital does not advertise the speed at which the drive spins. It can be found as cheap as $109.

#2 Pick Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 Backup Plus Slim Portable Hard Drive

Seagate Backup Plus Slim Hard Drive, is portable and a top pick for your Mac.

The Seagate Backup Plus Slim (model: STDR2000102) is designed for users on the go. Its slim profile can easily be fit in virtually any computer bag. Like the My Book, the Backup Plus Slim uses USB 3.0, but also has wireless syncing for mobile devices. iOS and Android devices can sync via WiFi with the accompanying backup app. Users even receive 200GB of free Microsoft OneDrive storage for two years. In spite of having 2TB, rather than the My Book’s 3TB, the Backup Plus Slim retails for $119. Users will need to determine if the extra features are worth the reduced storage and higher price.

#3 Pick LaCie Porsche Design P’9233 3TB Hard Drive

LaCie Porsche Design P’9233 3TB, a beautifully designed hard drive to complement your Mac.

In 2003 LaCie and Porsche teamed up to create a hard drive. The P’9233 (model: 9000302) continues that tradition, offering a combination of performance, portability and sleek looks. The case is made from sleek, rugged aluminum, ensuring it matches with your MacBook or MacBook Pro. Like the other top contenders, the P’9233 comes formatted for OS X and is fully compatible with Time Machine. The 3TB model is available for $139, with more expensive models reaching up to 8TB of storage.

#4 Pick WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo w/TB Cable 8TB Hard Drive

The WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo provide massive storage and exceptional looks.

When it comes to top-of-the-line performance and storage, it’s hard to beat the WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo. Unlike the other drives, this external drive relies on Thunderbolt to handle I/O. While this restricts its usage to the last couple of generations of Macs, those machines that have Thunderbolt ports will see significant speed improvements over USB 3 or competing technologies. The Thunderbolt interface also allows the drive to be daisy-chained with other devices, while the 8TB of storage should satisfy even the most data-hungry user. All this comes at a price, however, with the My Book Thunderbolt Duo coming in at $576.

#5 Pick Silicon Power Armor A60 External Hard Drive

The Silicon Power Armor A60 Shockproof Hard Drive is tough and practical.

Best Portable External Hard Drive For Mac 2018

The Silicon Power Armor A60 is an extremely rugged external hard drive that offers military-grade shockproof and waterproof performance. This USB 3.0 hard drive is ideal for on-the-go and outdoor use, and is available in both 1TB and 2TB configurations. The drive can be found for $58 and $97 respectively. We think this as one of the best portable external hard drives for macs.

#6 Pick Transcend 1TB Thunderbolt SSD

A bit pricey, but fast and realiable, the Transcend 1TB Thunderbolt Solid State Drive makes our list of top hard drives for Mac.

The Transcend 1TB Thunderbolt offers the very best in performance, combining an SSD with Thunderbolt connectivity. It also includes USB 3.0 for machines that may not have Thunderbolt, and comes pre-formatted for HFS+. The performance comes at a premium, however, with the Transcend 1TB listed at $1,199, although it can be found for $590.

Things to Look for in Top Hard Drive

Ruggedness is less important for a hard drive that will stay on your desk and rarely, if ever, leave the home or office. If, on the other hand, your hard drive will accompany you wherever you go, then ruggedness becomes a critical factor in your decision.

Speed is another factor to consider. The speed you require will depend largely on what you will be using the hard drive for. If you’ll be using it primarily for backups, a slower 5,400RPM drive should suffice. If you will be using it for more intensive tasks, such as editing video or audio files, a 7,200RPM or solid-state drive (SSD) would be a better choice.

Warranty: While virtually all hard drive manufacturers offer a warranty, not all warranties are created equal. Lengths, terms and what is covered vary from one manufacturer to another. Hopefully you will not have any issues with your new drive. If you do, however, a longer, more comprehensive warranty may be worth an additional upfront cost.

Features to Look For

Connectivity

The most important part of any external hard drive is the mechanism by which it connects to your computer. Without the right I/O, the best hard drive in the world is little more than a paperweight.

If you have the Retina MacBook, Apple’s newest portable that only has one USB-C port, you’ll need a hard drive that supports USB-C, or a USB-C adapter.

Other Macs ship with a combination of USB, Thunderbolt and FireWire ports, giving you the option to choose the interface that’s best for you.

For example, Thunderbolt offers transfer speeds in the neighborhood of 10Gbps, while USB 3.0 and FireWire 800 offer speeds of 5Gbps and 800 Mbps respectively. This makes Thunderbolt the obvious choice for data intensive operations where speed is of paramount importance, while USB 3.0 is more widely used with a greater variety of available devices.

Network Support

Many modern external hard drives offer built-in wireless support.

This can be a convenient alternative to the various I/O methods, allowing you to access the drive and transfer files over WiFi.

Still other external hard drives go a step further by providing the ability to create a mobile hotspot, making it easy for connected devices to access files and stream data and videos from the external drive.

Portability

Another significant factor when considering an external hard drive is the portability of the unit. By their nature, all external hard drives offer a degree of portability. The degree, however, depends on the model.

Some models offer sleek, slim lines that, while visually appealing, may not offer the rugged mobility you may require. Others, while bulkier, may offer greater padding and shock absorption.

Will you be using the drive primarily at your desk? Or will the drive travel with you outside of the home or office? Another consideration is whether you need power. How long will you be using the drive on-the-go? If you plan on using it for an extended period, one with an internal battery may be you best option.

Time Machine Compatibility

Time Machine is Apple’s automatic backup solution, keeping multiple revisions of your files. It “makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup drive is full.”

To get the most of any external hard drive, it needs to be one that supports Time Machine.

Drive Architecture

Best Portable Hard Drives For Mac

The architecture of the drive is another important consideration, one which will have a direct bearing on performance, ruggedness and cost.

For decades the default hard drive mechanism was a spinning, magnetic platter, or disk. As hard drive capacities increased over time, limitations in the capacity of a single platter led to multiple platters being paired together to act as a single drive.

While this allows hard drives to offer terabytes worth of storage, the more platters a hard drive contains the more complicated they become, and the greater the theoretical risk of corruption or failure.

In recent years, SSDs have come into wider use. Unlike traditional drives, SSDs are based on flash memory, giving them faster performance. Because they have no moving parts, they are more rugged, less prone to shock damage and are generally more reliable.

The cost of manufacturing SSDs, however, makes them a more expensive option than traditional hard drives and they currently do not offer the same capacity.

Drive Performance

Traditional hard drives offer a range of performance, measured in RPMs.

The most common options are 5,400RPM and 7,200RPM.

Drives spinning at 7,200 RPM will be faster at both read and write operations, but may come at a premium price compared to their 5,400RPM counterparts. The higher speed may also come at the cost of power consumption, making 5,400RPM drives a more appealing option for mobile drives that have their own battery power supply.

Which External Mac Hard Drive Should You Choose

As with many tech decisions, the choice of hard drive ultimately comes down to your needs. That and information. That’s why we’ve done the hard work and Mac external hard drive reviews. For home and home office users, the WD My Book for Mac 3TB offers one of the best balances of performance, storage and price. Given that current iMacs are shipping with 1TB drives, this option provides plenty of room for backups and future growth.

The most demanding of users will be best served by the WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo. With its Thunderbolt connectivity, 8TB of storage and ability to be daisy-chained with other drives or devices, this external hard drive is ideal for professionals, such as videographers, whose livelihood depends on being able to work with large files as quickly as possible.

Best Backup Hard Drive For Mac 2018

Those who work in rugged environments, or who simply don’t want to worry about their external hard drive, would do well to consider the Silicon Power Armor A60.

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Word For Mac 2016 Font Issues Jan 2018

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After the drawing opens, the command line feedback shows a substituted font(s), such as 'Substituting [simplex.shx] for [archquik.shx]' and when looking at the Text Style dialog box, the font is indicated as missing. Note: In some drawings, the text will disappear because of missing fonts.

I know talking about styles in Word makes eyes glaze over but they are a really useful part of Word (plus Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook).

Today I watched an ‘experienced’ Word user reformatting a document. He laboriously worked through the document, selecting paragraphs, phrases and even individual words then clicking on the ribbon to change the look. It took 10 minutes or more. With styles it would have taken a few seconds.

Authors using Word for Mac 2016 will need to read the Word for Mac2016 User Guide. We have created video documentation to help you through tagging document header, body, and references. We've also provided a video which walks you through the template validation process.

If the font for Heading 1 is changed then the font for Heading 2 will also change due to style inheritance. In a standard Word document, styles can usually be traced back to some base Word styles like Normal and Default Paragraph Font (paragraph and character styles respectively).

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There are typically 2 factors that might create this result. The first is that you do not have WORD set to use the Adobe PDF printer when you are printing (though I do not think this is the issue).

Re: Font spacing goes haywire when Word document is saved to PDF Bill@VT Sep 4, 2011 2:19 AM ( in response to ghumdinger ) Try changing to the press or print job settings before creating the PDF.

Styles have been around for all of Word’s history. They have changed and expanded over the years but the fundamentals are the same.

In this article we’ll explain the different types of styles including at least one that sneaked in without many people noticing. From just one type in the early days of Word, there’s five different style types in Word 2007, Word 2010 and Word 2013.

What is a Style?

A style is a collection of formatting instructions put under a single name.

For example ‘Heading 1’ has these default values in Word 2013 (choose Heading 1 style, right-click and choose ‘Modify Style’.

So ‘Heading 1’ means Cambria font, 14pt, Bold with a color setting, Left justified, 1.15 line spacing and 24pt line space before the text, plus other settings.

Instead of having to apply all those separate formatting options for each main heading, just apply the ‘Heading 1’ style.

Even better, if you decide to change the look of the headings, change the ‘Heading 1’ settings and all the headings with that style will be changed automatically.

Paragraph and Character styles

There are different types of style that can be applied to different parts of a document. Originally there were only Paragraph styles – styles you could apply to an entire paragraph.

That was OK but no help if you wanted consistent formatting for words in a paragraph like a product name Office-Watch.com or just emphasis.

So Microsoft added character styles. These are styles that can be applied to a word or even a single letter. A character style could be called ‘Product Name’ to ensure all references to a product or service look consistent.

Character styles have all the attributes of paragraph styles that are applicable to individual characters. Things like font, size, color, bold, italic etc are in both character and paragraph styles. Line spacing, Left/Right/Center/Justify etc. can only apply to entire paragraphs.

Adding character styles created a new problem. Microsoft discovered that users sometimes had two styles with the same name – one as a paragraph style, the other as a character style. Or people would have two styles such as ‘QuoteP’ and QuoteC’ with the same settings, one for paragraphs and another for word/characters.

Linked styles

So Word 2007 introduced ‘Linked Styles’ which act as both a paragraph style and character style, depending on the situation.

A linked style acts like a paragraph style when a paragraph/s is selected and the style applied.

It acts like a character style when less than a paragraph (a character/word/phrase) is selected and the style applied.

Gone is the need for ‘twin’ styles – now you can have a single style that can applied to any text in a document.

The best example of a linked style is already in Word 2007 or later. All the Heading styles were changed to linked styles. Here’s an example of ‘Heading 1’ style used as both a paragraph and character style at the same time.

Both the paragraph and words were changed to the same style by selecting them and pressing the ‘Heading 1’ shortcut Ctrl + Alt + 1 . The Style Gallery or styles list could have been used to do the same thing.

In the Modify Style dialog you’ll see the style type just under the name.

‘Linked’ isn’t the best choice of terms for this type of style. Most styles are already ‘linked’ to others through style inheritance. ‘Merged’ or ‘Combined’ might have been clearer to most people – but we’re stuck with ‘Linked’.

Which is which?

On the styles list, the three types of style have their own markers.

The lower case ‘a’ next to a character style.

The ‘backwards P’ or Pilcrow is used as an end of paragraph mark in Word and also serves to denote a Paragraph style.

The combined pilcrow and a is, unsurprisingly, for a linked style.

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Alas, the Style Gallery on the ribbon isn’t as clear. Among various (ignored) complaints about the Style Gallery is the inconsistent marking.

Paragraph styles (e.g. Normal, Pictures etc.) have the pilcrow next to the style name.

Linked paragraphs (Heading styles etc.) have no marking next to the name.

But neither do the character styles! In the above image there’s no way to know that ‘Subtle Emphasis’ is a character style.

Inheritance

A brief mention of style inheritance.

Styles are normally based on an existing style so only changes from the inherited style need to be made. This lets you apply broader changes to a document a lot faster.

For example, here’s settings for Heading 2

Heading 2 is based on the Heading 1 style, so all the settings for Heading 1 are linked into Heading 2 as a starting point.

The settings like ’13pt, Not Bold …’ etc. are only the differences between Heading 1 and what’s been changed to the look for Heading 2.

If the font for Heading 1 is changed then the font for Heading 2 will also change due to style inheritance.

In a standard Word document, styles can usually be traced back to some base Word styles like Normal and Default Paragraph Font (paragraph and character styles respectively). However you can create a style ‘from scratch’ with no inheritance. Here’s the same Heading 2 style with the ‘Style based on’ removed.

Now you can see all the formatting attributes in detail.

Unlinking styles might seem like a good idea that makes things simpler, but experienced Word users almost never do it. Style inheritance can be a nuisance at times, but its more helpful than a hindrance.

What’s going on?

Sometimes the formatting can get confusing. What’s a paragraph setting, what’s a character style and what is directly applied with no style? WordPerfect had a ‘Reveal Codes’ feature which Microsoft resisted copying but finally added to Word.

There’s two options for exposing what Word is up to. The Style Inspector (Word 2007 and later) and Reveal Formatting. Here’s both in action side-by-side.

As you can see the Style Inspector is a small box that can be dragged around the screen. Open the Style Inspector from the button at the bottom of the Styles pane:

Reveal Formatting has a lot more detail and sits in the right-hand pane. There’s a button for Reveal Formatting on the Style Inspector box.

The Shift + F1 shortcut will open the Reveal Formatting pane. This shortcut has worked since Word 2002 (XP).

Table and List styles

Also added in Word 2007 were two more styles.

Table styles, let you group together all the many formatting options for tables.

Similarly, all the options for list formatting were a nightmare until Word 2007 when List Styles were introduced. Now all the, sometimes complex, choices for lists (numbering, indenting at each level) can be more easily and consistently applied.

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Symptoms

Word For Mac 2016 Font Issues Jan 2018 Calendar

When you use Microsoft Office programs, you notice that visual features differ from one computer to another. For example, you see animations in Excel when you scroll through a worksheet on one computer, but you do not see the same animations on another computer.

Additionally, you may experience one or more of the following symptoms that reduce the functionality of an Office program:

Quark 2016 Font Issues

An Office program is blurry.

Your screen flickers or flashes.

An Office program is either mostly all white or all black.

Text in your document is not displayed well.

Your Office program crashes.

The performance of an Office program (other than startup and shutdown) is reduced.

In Microsoft Lync, there may be video delays or slowness when you are on a video call.

Cause

You may experience these symptoms if you have a video configuration on your computer that is incompatible with the Office feature set that is responsible for displaying the application and for animations in the application.

Office 2013 and later versions use a more efficient and accelerated method to draw the Office UI and the content. This includes relying on hardware acceleration, which is managed through the operating system. The hardware acceleration function of the operating system relies on up-to-date and compatible display drivers.

Note Hardware acceleration that uses the video card is always disabled when Office is running in a Remote Desktop session, and also when the application is started in safe mode.

Resolution

The resolution varies depending on your version of Windows and the symptom you are experiencing.

For the symptom: Poorly Displayed Text in Office Documents

If your symptom is 'Poorly Displayed Text in Office Documents,' try the following solutions first. Otherwise, skip to the next section titled All Other Symptoms.

Step 1: Use the 'ClearType Text Tuner' Setting

Search for ClearType.

Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 8: On the Start Screen, search for ClearType.

Windows 7: Click Start, and then enter ClearType in the Search Programs and Files box.

Select Adjust ClearType Text.

In the ClearType Text Tuner, enable the Turn on ClearType option, and then click Next.

Tune your monitor by following the steps in the ClearType Text Tuner, and then click Finish.

If you are still experiencing a problem after you adjust the ClearType settings, go to Step 2.

Step 2: Disable the Sub-Pixel Positioning Feature

Word 2016 and Word 2013 use sub-pixel text rendering by default. While this provides optimal spacing, you may prefer the appearance of pixel-snapped text for a minor improvement in contrast. To disable the sub-pixel positioning feature in Word 2016 or Word 2013, follow these steps.

On the File tab, click Options.

Click Advanced.

Under the Display group, clear the Use the subpixel positioning to smooth fonts on screen option.

Click OK.

If you are still experiencing a problem after you turn off the sub-pixel text rendering setting, re-enable the Use the subpixel positioning to smooth fonts on screen setting, and then go to Step 3.

Step 3: On Windows 7 clients, install the Windows 8 Inter-operatibility Pack

If you are using Windows10, Windows 8.1 or Windows 8, skip this section and go to the steps under the For All Other Symptoms section.

If you are using Windows 7, install the update for improving video-related components that is available in the following Knowledge Base article:

2670838 Platform update for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

If the previous steps did not resolve the 'Poorly Displayed Text in Office Documents' symptom, continue to troubleshoot your issue by using the steps in the next section.

For all other symptoms

Update your video driver

The best way to update your video driver is to run Windows Update to see whether a newer driver is available for your computer.

To run Windows Update based on your version of Windows, follow these steps:

Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 8

On the Start Screen, click Settings on the Charms Bar.

Click Change PC Settings.

In the PC settings app, click Windows Update.

Click Check for updates now.

If updates are available, click the driver that you want to install, and then click Install.

Windows 7

Click Start.

Type Windows Update in the Search programs and files box.

In the search results, click Check for updates.

If updates are available, click the driver that you want to install, and then click Install.

If your video-related problems in Office were fixed by when you updated your video driver, you do not have to take any further steps. Go to step 2 if updating the video driver does not fix the problems.

Note

Word For Mac 2016 Font Issues Jan 2018 Printable Calendar

Video card manufacturers frequently release updates to their drivers to improve performance or to fix compatibility issues with new programs.If you do not find an updated video driver for your computer through Windows Update and must have the latest driver for your video card, go to the support or download section of your video card manufacturer's website for information about how to download and install the newest driver.

More Information

Automatic disabling of hardware acceleration for some video cards

By default, hardware acceleration is automatically disabled in Office programs if certain video card and video card driver combinations are detected when you start an Office program. If hardware acceleration is automatically disabled by the program, nothing indicates that this change occurred. However, if you update your video card driver and it is more compatible with Office, hardware acceleration is automatically reenabled.

The list of video card/video driver combinations that trigger this automatic disabling of hardware graphics acceleration is not documented because the list is hard-coded in the Office programs and will be constantly changing as we discover additional video combinations that cause problems in Office programs. Therefore, if you do not see the same animation functionality on one computer that you see on another computer, we recommend that you update your video driver by using the instructions provided in the 'Update your video driver' section. If you still do not see the expected animation on your computer, update your video driver again soon. Microsoft is working with the major video card manufacturers on this issue, and these video card manufacturers will be releasing new video drivers as such drivers are developed.

Note

If two computers have the same video card/video driver combinations, you may still see a difference in the Office animation features between the two computers if one computer is running Windows 7 and the other computer is running Windows 8. On a computer that is running Windows 7, animations in Office are disabled if the video card/video driver combination appears on the incompatibility list. However, the same video combination on Windows 8 does not have animations disabled because of the improved video capabilities in Windows 8.

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