Our Favorite External SSD
Years of family photos and videos are too precious to live on just one phone or laptop. The external drive we chose is the Samsung T7: it's pocket-size, tough enough to survive a house full of kids, and fast enough to back up huge folders without a long wait. Here's the one we chose, plus a few others we seriously considered.
Samsung T7 Portable SSD
This is the external drive we actually use to back up years of family photos and videos. It's tiny, tough enough to survive a house full of kids, and moves huge folders fast, so nothing precious ever lives in just one place.
Check price on AmazonBefore you buy, check four things: Capacity, because photo and video libraries grow fast, and 1TB fills up quicker than you’d think while 2TB gives room to grow. Connection, since a USB-C drive only hits its fast speeds if your computer’s port supports them. Durability, because drop and water resistance matter for a drive that gets tossed in bags. Compatibility, since most drives work with Mac and Windows but may need reformatting first.
An external SSD is a great backup, but it shouldn’t be your only one. Pair it with a cloud backup so photos survive if the drive is ever lost.
The Samsung T7 at the top is the one we chose. Below it are the others we considered: the SanDisk Extreme for a rugged, water-resistant option, the Samsung T9 for faster speeds and more space, and the Crucial X10 as another fast, durable pick.
What else we considered
Also considered
SANDISK 1TB Extreme Portable SSD (Old Model)
A rugged, water- and dust-resistant SSD with a carabiner loop. A durable 1TB option for photos and school projects.
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SANDISK 2TB Extreme Portable SSD (Old Model)
The same rugged SanDisk Extreme with double the space. A better fit if you're backing up years of phone videos.
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Also considered
SAMSUNG T9 Portable SSD 4TB
Samsung's faster step up from our pick, with 4TB for a whole family's photo library. Worth it if you edit video or move huge files often.
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Also considered
KingSpec Z5 1TB External SSD
A lower-cost 1TB external SSD from a lesser-known brand. Fine as a secondary backup, but we'd keep important files on a second drive too.
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Also considered
Crucial X10 2TB Portable SSD
A fast, compact Crucial drive with drop and water resistance. A strong alternative to the Samsung for big photo and video backups.
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Also considered
1TB External Hard Drive
A generic 1TB external drive from an unlisted brand. It works for overflow storage, but we'd trust a name-brand drive for irreplaceable photos.
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Also considered
DIGIERA 1TB Magnetic Portable SSD
A magnetic SSD built to snap onto the back of a phone, so you can save video straight to it. Handy for anyone who shoots a lot of phone video.
Check priceWhy we chose it
Eight people generate an astonishing pile of photos and video. Birthday parties, school recitals, the little ones’ first everythings, plus the projects our oldest keeps for school—it all adds up until laptops start flashing that dreaded storage-full warning right in the middle of something important. We needed one safe place to park the family memories before a full drive forced us to start deleting them.
We chose the Samsung T7 Portable SSD because it is fast, pocket-sized, and tough enough to live in a busy house. Backing up a year of photos takes minutes rather than a whole evening, it slips into a drawer or a bag without a fragile spinning disk to worry about, and it plugs into whichever laptop needs offloading that week. For a family archive that keeps growing, that speed and simplicity matter.
We compared it against cheaper spinning hard drives and a few other portable SSDs, but the old-style drives are slower and far more likely to die if they get knocked off a desk—a real risk with small hands around. The Samsung T7 has no moving parts, holds up to daily handling, and moves our ever-growing library quickly and quietly. When it is holding irreplaceable memories, we would rather pay for something solid.
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