The Best Budget External Hard Drives in 2026 (When Storage Is Expensive)

The WD Elements has been the reliable default in the budget HDD category for years, and it earns that position through consistent performance and an above-average warranty. While most budget competitors offer just 12 months of coverage, Western Digital gives you two years - a meaningful difference when you are trusting a drive with backup copies of important work.

The drive comes formatted for Windows out of the box, but reformats easily to macOS APFS or exFAT for cross-platform use. No bundled software to install, no mandatory apps, no account creation. Plug it in, it mounts, you copy files. The matte black plastic shell is unremarkable but feels solid enough for desk or bag use.

WD's reliability data holds up well across independent monitoring. Backblaze, which publishes quarterly failure rate data for drives it uses in its own data centres, has consistently found WD among the more reliable brands in the HDD category. That matters more than most spec sheet numbers when you are choosing a backup drive.

The maths on the Seagate Expansion 5TB are difficult to argue with. At £161.99 (~$217) for 5TB, you are getting approximately £0.032 (~$0.043) per gigabyte - significantly cheaper per GB than any of the 2TB options on this list. If your priority is fitting as much data as possible onto a drive for the least amount of money, this is your answer.

It is worth being honest about the trade-offs. The 5TB portable Seagate is physically larger than the 2TB models - it is noticeably thicker and heavier, which makes it less ideal for travel but perfectly fine for a desk setup. The one-year warranty is shorter than the WD Elements' two years. And while Seagate's reliability has improved significantly, WD holds a slight historical edge in some independent monitoring reports.

None of that matters much if this is going to sit on a shelf as an archive drive. At this price per terabyte, you can afford to have two of them - one primary archive, one backup copy - and still spend less than you would on a single 2TB SSD.

The My Passport sits one rung above the WD Elements in Western Digital's own lineup, and the most meaningful upgrade is hardware encryption. The drive includes 256-bit AES hardware encryption managed through WD's software - not the kind that is easy to bypass, but proper on-disk encryption that protects data if the drive is lost or stolen.

For photographers and videographers storing client deliverables, this is a meaningful feature at a price point that barely asks you to stretch. A three-year warranty (vs. two on the Elements) and WD Backup software are also included. The drive is available in several colours, which sounds like a small thing until you are trying to identify which drive is which on a shelf of identical black rectangles.

The £7 (~$9) premium over the WD Elements is well justified if security or the longer warranty matters to you. If neither does, the Elements saves you the difference.

The Seagate Portable is frequently the cheapest 2TB drive from a major brand you will find at any given moment, and it comes with a feature that punches above its price: Seagate Rescue Data Recovery. Included for one year with purchase, this service can recover data from a physically damaged drive - flood, fire, mechanical failure - through Seagate's professional recovery service. For a backup drive, that is a surprisingly reassuring inclusion.

The warranty is one year rather than WD's two, and the build feels a step below the WD Elements in finish quality - the glossy plastic shows fingerprints and scratches more readily. It is also slightly slower in sustained transfers. None of these are dealbreakers for a drive you are using primarily for archive copies, but they are worth knowing before you choose.

Compatible with Mac, Windows, PlayStation, and Xbox straight out of the box. Plug and play, no software required.

The Canvio Basics exists for one reason: to be the cheapest 2TB drive from a brand you have heard of. It does that job well. The matte finish is actually a step up cosmetically from the glossy Seagate Portable - it resists fingerprints and looks tidier on a desk - but in almost every other respect it is the most stripped-back option here.

No backup software. No encryption. No recovery service. A USB 3.0 connection (not USB-C, which means you will need an adapter for most modern Macs). A two-year warranty is included, which is better than the Seagate Portable, but the drive does not match WD's reliability record in independent long-term monitoring.

The Canvio Basics earns its place on this list for students, casual users, and anyone who simply needs a cheap extra copy of something and does not want to spend more than the absolute minimum on a drive from a known brand. For professional archive use, we would push you toward the WD Elements at a few dollars more.