The 9 Best Thunderbolt Ssd External Drives For Mac (2023 reviews)

The latest samsung thunderbolt ssd external drive for mac is an absolute beast in terms of its features, and rightfully takes the top spot with ease. The Samsung T7 portable SSD is nice and fast for backing up important documents on your hard drive. It offers ms-dos fat and ex fat as the only formatting programs preinstalled on the drive. It comes with two cords about a foot long each. The front USB-A port is only usb. It's lightweight, comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable, a USB-A to USB-C cable, and 1TB is the sweet spot.

The drive is made out of an aluminum case that's very sturdy and light. It is great for emulation and older aaa titles that aren't super demanding.

Why We Like This:

Super fast, small, and works perfect with mac studio
Compact, easy to connect to pc, good capacity
Good brand reputation

Best With Windows: Crucial Thunderbolt Ssd External Drive For Mac

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Crucial makes beautiful and great drive with classic and smartly choosen materials. Portable SSD drives are so much faster than most USB thumb drives, so they’re great for transferring large amounts of data. It's a world that technology keeps shifting and changing, one thing that keeps evolving constantly is the pursuit of speed, or more precisely. For an external drive, this offers excellent performance and transfer speeds. This external drive will bring incredible performance with read speeds up to 1050 mb/s to your computer.

Indoors or outdoors, at home or off the grid, the X8 is manufactured to be durable, rugged. This connects to one of the USB 3.1 ports, and it's very fast. The SSD is made of Aluminium chassis and ruber on sides, and there is a plastic band across the device as decorative with this SSD name and spec on it. The X8's lightweight and compact build allows the device to fit neatly in the palm of your hand.

Why We Like This:

Great affordable ssd option with good writing speeds
Super well made and a nice physical package
New and hot release

Best For game: Sandisk Thunderbolt Ssd External Drive For Mac

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The sandisk thunderbolt ssd external drive for mac's high-end materials makes sure that it ages well with use. From the brand trusted by professional photographers worldwide, the sandisk extreme pro portable ssd provides powerful solid state performance featuring 2000mb/s read and 2000mb/s write speeds in a rugged storage solution that’s reliable for your toughest jobs. It has the speed to read and play from it. It allows apple and windows users to access the storage. It’s smaller and lighter as well as faster.

The drive is very portable and extremely fast. It’s more pricey but if you’re transferring large files regularly or using this as a scratch disc, you’ll be paying for the time you save. The rugged durability is one of its best features.

Why We Like This:

Mostly for movie storage and absolutely love it
Fast transfer speeds are vital as well
Manual included as all you need to do is plug it in
Fast as lightning and a great form factor

Best For mobile: Buffalo Thunderbolt Ssd External Drive For Mac

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The Buffalo SSD-put is an award-winning external SSD stick (solid state drive) that gives you affordable fast, secure file storage that you can fit into your pocket. It works exactly like a flash drive. The Blazing fast speed (up to 600 mb/s) enables you to connect the drive to pc and perform large intensive tasks simultaneously. It's pretty amazing that you can get full sata.

The internal SSD drives for next-gen Xbox consoles have higher speeds than the Buffalo SSD. It is designed as a portable memory drive with a retractable USB plug. It is great for console storage expansion, the xbox s/x can only play s/x games from its internal drive or the official expansion card.

The PS5's Sept 2021 update allows the PS5 to play games from an internal M.2 SSD plugged into the expansion slot.

Why We Like This:

A great choice for game storage
You can enjoy faster loading times on games stored on the ssd
Fast drive in the right port, tempermental port speeds
Boot speed is sufficient, not prone to errors from forced shutdowns

Best With New And old Generation computers: Vectotech Thunderbolt Ssd External Drive For Mac

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The vectotech thunderbolt ssd external drive for mac is suitable and reliable and fits well with your regular usage. Vectotech portable ssd provides transfer speeds 5x faster than conventional hard drives. It comes with superspeed of usb 3.1 gen 2 and uasp support, and rapid ssd is a great fit for photographers, videographers, gamers, djs and any other users with need of a backup. It has rubber strips on the bottom that prevents slips from slick surfaces. It works with pc and mac straight out of the box. It has big advantage over traditional spinning hard drives for not having any moving parts, making it much more reliable for falling, vibration and shock.

It comes with usb type c to c and usb type c cables, which makes it universal for older and newer computers. It is also capable of withstanding operating temperatures from. It is easy to set up with a macbook machine.

Why We Like This:

Capable of withstanding operating temperatures from
Shock and vibration resistant up to 1500g at 05msec
Lightweight and solid, but a bit large
Save your time on moving and/or copying your photos, videos, documents, music and etc

Best For Professional content creators: Plugable Thunderbolt Ssd External Drive For Mac

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Plugable offers a variety of drive for personal choice and yet maintaining quality in all the variants. It is a super fast drive that holds a ton of information and does not require much installation. It is formatted EXFat, which means it will work with pretty much any modern computer with Thunderbolt 3 ports out of the box. It has a full metal enclosure designed to dissipate heat and protect your portable hard drive. It is exactly the same transfer speed as an apple formatted drive.

Compared to other Thunderbolt 3 drives, Plugable's 2TB External SSD provides access to the fast speeds of the Thunderbolt 3 bus without breaking the bank. The pros of this device are high speeds, small size, easy use across platforms, and cool operation. The enclosure is all metal, so it's very sturdy and well built. It is very easy to use for anyone.

Why We Like This:

Perfect for thunderbolt 3 mac users
Great construction, extremely fast read/write speeds
Great external system drive for mac

Best With Power supply: Fantom Drives Thunderbolt Ssd External Drive For Mac

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Fantom Drives has been making great drive for years, thanks to a combination of clever design and appropriate materials. It’s about the size of a deck of cards but feels heavy and solid in the hand. It is compact yet built like a tank with high-quality aluminum. It allows heat from the nvme to be transferred to a thermal pad and then dissipated to each grooved edge of extreme. It measures at 0.5" x 2.5" x 4.25" and no power supply is needed.

The aluminum case feels nice and solid. It is as fast or faster as your internal SSD. It runs at 90%+ capacity, 24/7 and the performance and reliability have been absolutely top notch. This one works great, especially when doing heavier stuff with final cut where even for very small projects hundreds of gigs are required.

Why We Like This:

Very high quality physical fit and finish with very high quality performance
Very fast, physically smaller than expected
Good investment for long term

Best For music production: Sandisk Professional Thunderbolt Ssd External Drive For Mac

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The sandisk professional thunderbolt ssd external drive for mac's material feels more premium than its price would suggest. The G-DRIVE PRO SSD device provides shock-resistant storage in a durable case with up to 3-meter drop protection(1), 1000lb crush resistance, and designed with handpicked components to sustain the rigors of travel. It is compatible with USB 3.1 gen. The Thunderbolt 3 (40gbps) port provides a powerful, versatile connection that allows you to plug in to a compatible computer and instantly extend your storage without the need for external power.

This 2 TB external hard drive is very easy to setup. A protective aluminum core helps prevent overheating to maintain a high level of sustained performance, while a custom enclosure insulates the drive to help minimize heat transfer to the exterior of the device when in use. It is easy to carry around.

Why We Like This:

Lb crush resistance, and designed with handpicked components to sustain the rigors of travel
Real fast reliable drive from sandisk
Ultra-rugged design with 3m drop protection and 1000lb crush resistance

Best Storage Capacity: Sandisk Professional Internal Drive

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Compared with other drive in this category, the sandisk professional internal drive has a convenient design. This little drive is fast, fast, fast. It is built with a cooling aluminum core to sustain ultra-fast speeds under its heaviest workflows. It is very fast as it’s thunderbolt, just make sure your computer can actually take advantage of the speed. It is compatible with usb 3.1 gen. It is built for compatibility with both thunderbolt 3 and usb-c, this versatile drive enables you to efficiently collaborate across devices. It heats up even when not using it. It is very straightforward to include this disk.

Why We Like This: