There’s nothing more fulfilling than going through your old photo storage albums. You remember how fun the good old days were. Imagine what will happen when you can access more of your old photos and lengthy videos with the click of a button? Memories like that are forever cherished, and if you got lots of memories to share with your future generations, the best way to do it is to get a portable external hard drive for yourself.

Portable external hard drives often serve as a backup for the internal drives on our computers. Some of these portable external hard drives are either specifically designed for Mac or for Windows PCs or both.

Most external portable hard drive buyers end up buying what they don’t need. This is because they got confused at a point and decided to make a random choice. After all, to them, all external portable hard drives are the same.

They are not, and that's what you'll learn when you read any of the many reviews on external portable hard drives that we've taken the time to test, review and write on HDD Club, a storage drive review website dedicated to reviewing the best pieces.

On HDD Club, we’ve reviewed tons of external portable drives, many of which were reviewed based on the following preferences

1. Data Transfer Speeds: External portable hard drives are either solid state drives (SSDs) or hard disk drives (HDDs). The SSDs are often preferred by many because they boast of faster transfer speeds than the conventional HDDs. However, they tend to cost more than the HDDs. So if you are keen to get fast data transfer speeds on your system, you should head on to HDD Club and take a look at the SSDs we've reviewed.

2. Durability and Waterproof: Are you planning to take your portable external hard drive along with you on a trip to various countries with different climates? Yes. Great idea, but not for your drive. If you want your drive and the data in it to be safe from the elements as well as constant tossing and turning from you and your family, a rugged portable external hard drive will definitely work for you. There are several rugged SSD and HDD reviews you’ll find on HDD Club.

3. Backup For Your Mobile Device: If we could buy an iPhone 7 or a Samsung Galaxy S7 with an internal memory of 256GB, we surely wouldn’t complain about our mobile device storage getting filled up easily. Well, there are external portable hard drives that serve as backup drives for your mobile devices. Most of them are often wireless drives with USB connectors so you can transfer your data anyhow you want. Additionally, they allow internet connections to pass through them so you can browse while transferring data. The best part of it is that most of these wireless portable external hard drives are battery powered and can last up to 8 hours on a single charge.

4. Encryption: Most drives now come with the AES 128-bit encryption to protect your data. However, you may still come across best-selling drives that don't have the encryption feature.

5. Mac Only or Windows Only: Some external portable hard drives are either specifically formatted for Mac or for Windows. This allows you to plug and play the drive depending as per the platform it is formatted for. Other drives allow you to format the drive into the exFAT mode so you can use it on Windows and Mac without any other formatting required. Additionally, the ports on the drive can indicate the operating system it is meant for e.g. Thunderbolt ports.

Why waste time researching the pros and cons of all external portable drives on the internet when we have done that for you on HDD Club?

Visit HDD Club and see what we’re committed to doing for you.