External hard drives for all your music and movies

Thanks to the advent and proliferation of SSD technology, external hard drives are becoming faster, more convenient, and in some cases cheaper. It’s easy now to get a whopping 10 TB in a regular hard drive for the price of a 2 TB SSD card. So which hard drive should you turn to when your computer is overflowing with MP3s and WMVs? It depends on your priorities. Are you planning to tote your data collection around with you? Do you have a staggering amount of data you simply want to back up? Or are you looking to augment your laptop so that you can constantly call on your collection of digital entertainment? The answers to those questions will help you decide which hard drive is right for you. Here are four hard drives we think can help best meet your needs.

If you’ve got a massive collection of music and movies and you don’t plan on taking them outside of your home office or dorm room, this Seagate is the perfect solution. With 16TB of storage, this Goliath also delivers value. It’s not ideal for travel, given that it runs on a power adapter and does not have a rugged case to protect it from shaking and drops. It also won’t have the blazing fast transfer speeds of an SSD, but that probably won’t be a big deal as with a collection that needs 16TB of storage you probably have enough to watch and listen to without transferring your entire collection to your desktop.

The WD My Passport Wireless Pro series is full of features that will delight the person who lives out of pocket, or backpack, or briefcase. Featuring a wireless connection that allows you to stream your digital content to your phone through the My Cloud mobile app and a built-in phone charger, not to mention a battery life of up to 10 hours, you’ll always be ready to watch your favorite movie.

With 2 TB of blazing-fast SSD storage; an outer shell that provides resistance to water, dust and a two-ton car crash, you know you’ll be able to get your data quickly even after you drop this bad boy. If your interest in video and music storage has more to do with your creative projects than with your need for entertainment, the included one-month trial of Adobe Creative Cloud should be the cherry on top of this deal.

Samsung is the master of SSD technology, so you know you’ll be getting fast transfer and read/write speeds. The added perks of the T7 Touch over other Samsung models is the peace of mind it brings. A built-in thumbprint reader means that your snooping roommate won’t be able to steal your favorite movies, or cop your band’s demos. An LED status indicator will let you know whether the device is busy, and its outer shell should protect from shock and drops from up to 6 feet.