Speed: Hard drive write and read speeds refer to how quickly data can be transferred on and off the drive. Anything less than that will simply fill up too fast to be useful. In general, though, we'd recommend video editors getting a minimum of 1TB. Of course, bigger hard drives are pricier, so it's a matter of getting as much storage as you can for your buck.

Video files are big, so a video editor will want a hard drive with as much storage as possible. Most average consumer hard drives these days sit somewhere between 500GB and 4TB, though you can get ones with a lot less or a lot more storage, if you prefer. If you're relatively new to hard drive shopping, this is a good primer of the key features you should be looking out for.Ĭapacity: The headline feature of any hard drive is its capacity – the amount of data it's capable of storing. The speed and storage needs of those working in video are much greater than most other creative disciplines, simply because video is so data-intensive.īelow, we've listed the main criteria we looked at when selected our favorite hard drives for video editing. Picking out the best hard drives for video editors is a different matter to picking out the best hard drives for anyone else, or even the best hard drives for photographers. What we look for in the best hard drives for video editing It comes set to RAID 5 as default but it’s also reconfigurable to RAID 0, 1, and 10 for maximum flexibility. Though its 7,200RPM hard disk drives aren’t technically the fastest you can get, all four are removable for a quick workflow switch-up.

Sustained maximum read/write speeds of up to 1000MB/s and 1100MB/s respectively mean it’ll handle almost anything you throw at it. Dual Thunderbolt 3 ports allow daisy chaining of up to five additional devices, while up to 85W of charging power is delivered via the USB-C connection for compatible MacBook or MacBook Pro devices. However, it does boast some very impressive specs and performance stats. Destined for heavy workloads and professionals, this storage device doesn’t come cheap.

2tb solid state drive for macbook pro