Best External Hard Drives (2026): SanDisk, Samsung, and More

That brings us to the G-Drive ArmorATD, a solid, semi-rugged external hard disk drive that doesn’t (currently) cost as much as some others in its class. We tested it when it was part of the SanDisk Professional division, and you’re likely to still find it branded as such. Somewhat unique among external drives, it supports the macOS-friendly HFS+ format out of the box, making it plug-and-play with Apple’s Time Machine backup system. You can still use it with Windows, but you’ll just need to reformat it to exFAT (likewise, when testing on Linux, I formatted it to ext4).

The ArmorATD is compact for a spinning drive, measuring 3.4 by 5.1 inches and less than an inch thick. A removable black rubberized sleeve cushions the drive, and the enclosure is a silverish-gray on the top and bottom. One end has a cover that protects a USB-C port with a USB 3.1 Gen 1 interface (which works with Thunderbolt 3 or higher ports on Macs). The ArmorATD comes with two cables: one USB-C to USB-C and one USB-C to USB-A.

I describe this drive as semi-rugged because it’s a spinning drive, which makes it more vulnerable to bumps and bruises, but it’s designed to sustain drops of up to 3.3 feet, and it has an IP54 rating, which means it’ll stand up to splashes, but it can’t be submerged in water.

The ArmorATD managed a read speed of 133 MB/s, just below the claimed 135 MB/s and a little faster than the WD Passport Ultra above. In all my testing, I haven’t seen a huge difference among similar spinning drives (most 5,400-rpm drives score around 120 to 130 MB/s), and you’re unlikely to notice much difference in real-world tasks. Some users complain online that G-Drives aren’t as good as they were before Western Digital acquired them, but I didn’t have issues during my review. If you want something a little more rugged, the G-Drive ArmorATD is a great option at a reasonable price. I tested the 2-TB model, but options range from 1 TB to 6 TB.

The LaCie Rugged Pro5 is currently one of the most eye-wateringly expensive SSDs on the market, but it is an amazingly fast drive. The “5” in the name stands for, you guessed it, Thunderbolt 5, which, despite being announced seemingly forever ago, has been painfully slow to trickle into the market. This made testing a bit tricky, but fortunately a friend let me borrow his brand-new MacBook Pro 14 for testing. The results were impressive.