If you work with high-resolution video, RAW photography, or long-term creative archives, a reliable 4TB external hard drive is still one of the most important tools in your workflow. It's the backbone of backups, project handovers, travel edits, and long-term storage.
But not all drives are created equal. Speed, durability, thermal performance, real-world reliability, and even physical design all matter far more to creatives than headline specs alone.
In this guide, we break down and score the five best 4TB external drives for filmmakers, photographers and creative professionals. Each drive is tested against real-world use cases like editing, backups, on-set data management, and archive storage.
How We Score External Drives
- Price — Real-world pricing, not launch MSRP
- Read/Write Speed — Sustained performance, not burst
- Reliability — Track record and failure rates
- Design & Build — Materials and thermal performance
- Portability — Size, weight, bus-powered convenience
- Creative Workflow — How well it fits real production
Samsung T7 Shield 4TB
The Samsung T7 Shield is one of the most widely trusted portable SSDs in the creative industry, and for good reason. It strikes an excellent balance between speed, durability, and price. With real-world read and write speeds around 900–1,000 MB/s, it's fast enough for 4K and light 6K editing, smooth scrubbing, and rapid backups. The rubberised shell offers serious protection for travel and on-set use, and it runs cool even under sustained loads.
Filmmakers, photographers, and creatives who want one drive that can do everything—editing, backups, travel, and long-term use.
SanDisk Extreme Pro 4TB
The SanDisk Extreme Pro is designed for creatives who care about speed above almost everything else. With sustained read and write speeds pushing 2,000 MB/s, this is one of the fastest bus-powered external drives available. It excels for editing directly off the drive, especially for high-bitrate codecs, multicam timelines, and large photo libraries. The aluminium enclosure helps with heat dissipation, though it can get warm under heavy sustained loads.
Editors working directly from external drives who need maximum speed.
LaCie Rugged SSD Pro 4TB
The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro is built for professional production environments. This is the drive you see on set, strapped to DIT carts, and thrown into camera bags. It's shock-resistant, dust-resistant, water-resistant, and extremely fast over Thunderbolt. The downside is cost and the requirement for Thunderbolt ports to unlock its full performance.
Professional film sets, DITs, and harsh travel conditions.
WD My Passport 4TB
Not every drive needs to be fast. The WD My Passport remains one of the best value archive drives available, offering massive capacity at a low price. It's not suitable for editing directly from, but for backups, completed projects, and long-term storage it is extremely cost-effective.
Affordable backups and long-term archives.
G-Technology ArmorATD 4TB
The ArmorATD is a ruggedised hard drive designed for creatives who need durability but don't want to pay SSD prices. It's slower than SSDs but far more physically robust than standard portable hard drives, making it ideal for travel and field work.
Travel backups and rugged field use on a budget.
How DriveVault Fits Into This Workflow
Once you start working with multiple external drives, the real challenge is no longer storage—it's organisation. DriveVault allows you to scan your external drives once, then browse, search and preview their contents even when the drives are unplugged.
- Search across all your drives at once — find files without plugging anything in
- See image and video previews — verify files without reconnecting drives
- Compare drives to verify backups — detect missing files and duplicates
- Tag, rate and organise files — across your entire archive
Whether you're working with fast SSDs or slower archive drives, DriveVault turns a collection of external disks into a single, searchable creative library.
Download DriveVault Free