Mac Thunderbolt portable drive roundup: The best fast drives for your Mac laptop

September 9, 2014

For this roundup, I'm looking specifically at portable external hard drives equipped with Thunderbolt interfaces. They have to be bus-powered, small enough to comfortably fit in a bag or backpack and made by a company that has more than a passing familiarity with the Mac in order to make the cut.

Elgato Thunderbolt Drive+

The current king of the mountain of portable Thunderbolt drive performance is Elgato's Thunderbolt Drive+. It's equipped with Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interfaces, but inside it uses a Solid State Drive (SSD) mechanism made by Plextor — no hard drive here, pure flash storage for maximum speed. Plextor's flash drive chips are rated for use in server environments, and Elgato rates the drive at able to transfer at up to 420 megabytes per second. You will pay more because Elgato's using industrial-strength SSD, but you'll be hard-pressed to find anything faster.

$778.99 - Buy now

WD My Passport Pro

Western Digital's My Passport Pro is a portable, bus-powered RAID drive with a Thunderbolt connection. Inside are two 2.5-inch hard disk drives, and they come from the factory formatted in a RAID Level 0 (striping) configuration for maximum speed. You can reformat them using Apple's Disk Utility into a RAID Level 1 config, if you'd like the security of data mirroring instead. There's no USB 3.0 here — Thunderbolt or bust — but the cable is actually integrated, so it's one less thing to lose when you're on the road. Available in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities, but be warned: the 4 TB model is a lot thicker and heavier.

$277.52 - Buy now

LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt & USB 3.0 Hard Drive

LaCie's Rugged line has a look that people either love or hate — I liken the thick orange edge of the case to a life raft — but it's built for abuse. The casing is shock, dust and water-resistant, which makes it a good choice if your work takes you places where you can't afford to be gentle with your gear. Inside the hard drive is shock-mounted, and LaCie says it should be able to withstand a 6 foot drop (though I wouldn't get into the habit of tossing it). The Thunderbolt cable is integrated, so you won't lose it or leave it behind. LaCie offers up 1 TB, 2 TB and SSD versions, so you can pick and choose depending on how much storage you need and what you're willing to pay. I've priced out the 1 TB version.

$199.99 - Buy now

G-Tech G-Drive Mobile with Thunderbolt and USB 3.0

G-Technology has differentiated itself as a leader in RAID storage systems, but they make really good single-drive portable units, too. Their G-Drive Mobile with Thunderbolt is a 1 TB hard drive that runs at 7200 RPM, making it a faster little bugger than some of the competition. The aluminum case is an attractive accompaniment for your Mac.

$192.29 - Buy now

Those are my choices — how about yours?

Admittedly, you will pay more for a Thunderbolt-equipped portable Mac drive. If you want to save yourself some scratch, you can pick up cheaper USB 3.0 drives; I recently posted a roundup of Mac USB 3.0 drives for you to take a look at too.

One important note for Thunderbolt mavens: All of these drives have a single Thunderbolt port on them, so they'll need to be at the end of their daisy-chain.

Hopefully this will help you narrow your choices a bit when it comes time to go shopping for a portable Thunderbolt drive. If you have any questions, fire away!