If you are looking for the best Raspberry Pi 4 external hard drive then you have come to the right place.
We have tested many external USB drives and have complied the best and most reliable external hard drives into this post.
There are many different things to consider when choosing a USB external hard drive for your Raspberry Pi 4.
Here are a few factors to consider:
- Storage capacity (based on how you will use the drive)
- Read and write speed (Are you archiving data, or frequently writing to the drive).
- USB bus support (USB 3.0 is the fastest supported bus size on a Raspberry Pi 4).
- Form factor (Do you need compact storage due to physical space limitations).
- Budget (Do you have a set price?).
We have put our recommendations into categories based on the above criteria.
Storage Capacity:
If you are storing media to serve content for Plex or other media streaming applications. The size of the hard drive you pick initially is very important.
Media files especially video content can be several gigabytes in size and can easily quickly consume your storage capacity.
The good thing about the Raspberry Pi 4 is with the aid of a powered USB hub (see our guide to the best powered USB hubs for the Raspberry Pi 4) you can always extend storage capacity at any time by adding an additional USB 3.0 external hard drive to the Raspberry Pi. The only limitation with multiple USB drives is the power consumption of the drives and the overall bus bandwidth. The Raspberry Pi 4 should have no problem transferring data to 2 or 3 drives at the same time however any more than that you may see read and write performance issues.
If you are thinking of using your Raspberry Pi 4 as a media or backup server then you will want to start off right with one of these drives:
Recommended Raspberry Pi 4 external hard drives for high storage needs:
| Western Digital Easystore 14TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive | WD 14 TB Elements External Hard Drive – USB 3.0 |
| USA Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2URKRqB | UK Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2UWpdlb |
| About this external hard drive: | About this external hard drive: |
| Large storage capacity USB 3.0 Fastest Data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps | Large storage capacity USB 3.0 Data transfer rates up to 140Mb per second |
| Seagate Expansion 14TB External Hard Drive | WD 14 TB My Book USB 3.0 Hard Drive |
| USA Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3w950Fy | UK Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3hqEhPs |
| About this external hard drive: | About this external hard drive: |
| Large storage capacity USB 3.0 Data transfer rates up to 140Mb per second | Large storage capacity USB 3.0 Data transfer rates up to 140Mb per second |
Recommended Raspberry Pi 4 external hard drives on a budget medium storage needs best Speed:
| WD 4TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive | WD 4TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive |
| USA Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3haJxYN | UK Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3dxC5Va |
| About this external hard drive: | About this external hard drive: |
| Small Form Factor USB 3.0 Data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps | Large storage capacity USB 3.0 Data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps |
Recommended Raspberry Pi 4 external hard drives on a budget with low storage needs and the best Speed:
| WD 1 TB My Passport Portable Hard Drive | WD 1 TB My Passport Portable Hard Drive |
| USA Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3jyLSOv | UK Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3qCwiDf |
| About this external hard drive: | About this external hard drive: |
| Small Form Factor USB 3.0 Data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps | Large storage capacity USB 3.0 Data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps |
This concludes our Raspberry Pi 4 external hard drive recommendations.
Feel free to comment below and let us know what external USB drives you use with your Raspberry Pi 4.
If you have any questions or need any further advice please reach out to us below or on social media platforms.
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Good morning,
How many hard disks can be connected to the Raspberry PI 4 using USB 3.0 hubs etc
Thanks
Roy