A big silver G on the front and hints of bright blue under a faux grille make this drive look more like a movie prop than a natural fit for a minimalist MacBook home office.

We have memories from the 1990s of installing applications on fistfuls of 1.44MB floppy disks.

Nowadays, a microSD fits 400GB into the size of your thumbnail.

They are one of the most effective ways to upgrade and speed up a Mac.

So in this article we round up the best SSDs for a Mac owner.

After the individual product recommendations we offer general buying advice that will help you come to the right decision.

However, the Rugged range has mostly used conventional hard drives in the past, which are slower than the latest solid-state drives, as well as being bigger and heavier.

Welcome the Rugged Pro SSD, which is primarily aimed at creative users.

Its pretty expensive, costing 400419 with 1TB of storage, and a hefty 700 for the 2TB model, but it justifies that price with an even tougher design and the latest, super-fast solid-state drives designed for professional video work.

It only weighs 0.1kg, so you can easily slip it into your pocket or bag when youre travelling and barely even notice that its there.

It can cope with being dropped from a height of 3m, and can even resist the weight of a two-tonne car driving over it.

It includes a five-year warranty in case anything does go wrong, which includes one visit to LaCies data-recovery labs if you need to retrieve important data.

The drive didnt disappoint, recording consistent write speeds of 1780MBs, and an even faster 2480MBs for read speeds - with both figures leaving just about every other SSD drive weve ever tested trailing in its wake.

And, when backing up our iTunes music library, the Rugged SSD Pro blew us away by backing up 5GB of music files in just five seconds - look away for a couple of seconds and youll miss it.

Best Ssd External Drive Portable SSD Of

Its also our favourite portable SSD of the moment, with a few little design touches that make it the handiest model around for portable use.

Most portable SSDs are made to withstand drop impacts, but here even the finish is.

Its front is plastic, though, with little shallow dot indents that, yet again, make it look less serious than some others.

In more practical terms, IP55 gadgets like this cant be submerged in water, but dont mind rain.

Theres a single cable in the box, but a little adapter means you can switch the terminal between a Thunderbolt 3-style USB-C or a trusty old full-size USB.

On the drive itself youll find a link to download SanDisks SecureAccess app.

Best Ssd External Drive Password Hint If

You can let the app give you a password hint if you have a tendency to forget logins, but make sure its a good one as the files are encrypted, and wont be recoverable without the password.

We can already imagine losing it, and only finding it again when moving house several years into the future.

Not only is this one of the most Mac-centric models you can buy, its among the toughest, too.

Best Ssd External Drive For Mac