The Best 8TB External Hard Drives of 2024

Best Overall

WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive

$180 at Amazon $180 at Walmart $180 at Dell

Western Digital is one of the most trusted names in data storage, and trust is vital for a device that will hold so much of your valuable memories, media, and information. WD’s My Book external hard drive comes in an 8TB size and includes all the reliability, performance, and convenience you could want in a personal storage solution.

Mainstream hard drives of 8TB capacity generally can’t fit into a portable size, but the WD My Book is still a reasonably compact unit that houses a 3.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD). It stands upright and measures 6.7 inches tall, 1.9 inches wide, and 5.5 inches deep. You must plug it into the wall with a power adapter, so it’s not easy to tote around different places.

My Book transfers files as fast as any comparable hard drive today through its single USB 3.0 port (USB 2.0 compatible). If you’re looking for a quick and easy backup process, it comes with WD Backup software for Windows and is compatible with Time Machine for Macs. WD Security software is included, too, along with an excellent three-year warranty for extra peace of mind.

Runner Up

Seagate Expansion Desktop External Hard Drive

$190 at Walmart

As a top digital storage brand, Seagate's external hard drive offerings are dependable even at lower price ranges. The Expansion desktop hard drive, weighing just over two pounds, is designed to provide a simple, easy-to-use, and frill-free file-storage experience, leading to an attractive price per gigabyte for 8 TB capacity.

Just plug the power cable into an outlet and insert the USB 3.0 cable into your computer, and Windows will recognize it out of the box (or you can reformat it for Mac). It doesn't include additional software, but you may want to use or find backup software.

File transfers to and from the 3.5-inch HDD are quick, with a listed max speed of 160 MB/s. It doesn't boast the fastest speeds but is fast enough to do the job. Some users reported it generating worrying noises and some heat, which doesn't necessarily mean any trouble. If you have any issues, though, a one-year warranty is included. 

Best Network-Attached Storage

Western Digital 8TB My Cloud Home Personal Cloud Storage

$220 at Walmart $220 at Best Buy View on Westerndigital.com

Backing up your data to an external storage device is smart, but in today’s always-connected world, why not also take advantage of the cloud? With network-attached storage (NAS) like WD’s 8TB My Cloud Home, you can save your files on the hard drive and access or manage them from the My Cloud Home app anywhere you have an Internet connection.

The app lets you easily search your content and stream videos from your drive. You can also remotely upload files to the drive and automatically back up / sync your phones, tablets, or laptops. Being online means that sharing content is easy, too, but on the flip side, you can create separate private spaces on the drive for each person in your household.

The My Cloud Home plugs directly into your Wi-Fi router through a Gigabit Ethernet port, so you don’t worry about losing your wireless connection. Next to the Ethernet port on the back is a USB 3.0 port for wired file transfers. If you need extra performance or reliability, an 8TB My Cloud Home Duo version of the product is available, with dual HDDs set up in a RAID 1 mirror configuration by default.

Best for Game Consoles

Avolusion 8TB Gaming Hard Drive

$100 at Amazon

Do you find yourself with more saved games and downloaded content than your PlayStation or Xbox console’s internal storage can hold? Expanding your space with any external hard drive that has over 250 GB and supports USB 3.0 is easy.

Avolusion offers an 8TB drive explicitly designed for plug-and-play use with gaming consoles. One is pre-formatted to work with PS4, PS4 Slim, and PS4 Pro consoles, and a separate product is available for Xbox One, Xbox One S, and Xbox One X.

Adding 8TB of storage should tide you over for years and years to come (and it’s the highest-capacity drive a PS4 can support). You can store 200 full games, depending on the file size of each one. A faster hard drive means shorter load times, but the difference isn’t significant enough for speed to be a considerable factor.

The Avolusion HDDGear’s 7200-RPM hard disk is more than fast enough to get you back in the game, and its angular design will fit right in with your gaming setup. 

Best Rugged

LaCie Rugged Raid Shuttle 8TB

$497 at Amazon

The LaCie Rugged Raid Shuttle is an 8TH external and portable hard drive with everything you need to keep your data safe. It's shock, dust, and water-resistant and comes with a vivid orange bumper along its sides, so you don't have to worry about drops. It supports USB-C to USB 3.0, making it compatible with Mac and PC and offering faster file transfer and connectivity options.

Its features include configuring RAID 0/1 with the built-in wizard, a self-encrypting password system, and a complimentary one-month membership to Adobe Creative Cloud. Even better, if something goes wrong, the hard drive has a three-year warranty, including data recovery services.