Best Hard Drive For Plex


Plex is a multi-purpose media platform in which you can store media files like Audio Video Images, and you can also use it to stream movies quickly and remotely. Now the way it works is quite simple and comfortable; first, you install the Plex media platform or server on your computer or any device on which you want to store your data, and now to access this data remotely, you have to install the HD Plex app on another compatible device with an Internet connection to access this data. Now the main issue that arises in this regard is how much space or a good storage device do you need to use in order to get the data quickly uploaded or stored, so if you are a person that desperately uses plex and is in search of a Best hard drive for plex or storage device well this is why I have made this guide for you in which I have picked up the best external hard drive for plex that will be suitable for you. While choosing the plex server hard drive, you also need to look out for other things like compatibility, hard drive speed for plex, data writing rate, and other main things. Still, compatibility plays a very important part in this because if you pick a server SSD device that is not fully compatible with your pc or device, it is going to make some problems for you like you can’t use it at its full potential some features will be limited or sometimes random stops. Hence, it’s important that you fully check th

Our Top 3 Recommendations

Best Hard Drive For Plex Summary

Award Image Model Price
Best Budget Hard Drive Seagate Iron Wolf 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive Seagate Iron Wolf 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive See On Amazon
Best Premium High Performance Hard Drive WD 5TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive WD 5TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive See On Amazon
Best External Hard Drive WD 10TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive WD 10TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive See On Amazon
Best Hard Drive for Media Server WD 1TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive WD 1TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive See On Amazon
Best Overall Hard Drive Seagate Iron Wolf 3TB NAS Internal Hard Drive Seagate Iron Wolf 3TB NAS Internal Hard Drive See On Amazon
Best Nas Hard Drive for Plex Seagate 16TB Seagate 16TB See On Amazon
Best External hard drive for media center Seagate Expansion 12TB Seagate Expansion 12TB See On Amazon
Best External Hard Drive for Plex Server WD 6TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive WD 6TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive See On Amazon

Best Hard Drive For Plex At a Glance:

Best Hard Drive For Plex Reviews

Seagate Iron Wolf 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive (Image credit: Amazon)

Seagate Iron Wolf 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive

Best Budget Hard Drive

Seagate’s Iron Wolf series hard drives are built for high-performance usage. Besides providing fast data transfer, the Iron Wolf series hard drives are also durable enough to last for a long time. With 4TB of storage, the IronWolf 4TB internal drive is the perfect all-in-one drive for multi-bay NAS applications.

During a full year, this plex hard drive supports up to 180TB of workload and comes with a performance scale of 24x7, whereas the pro version supports 300TB/year. Up to 8 bays can be accommodated by this hard drive for plex. A 3.5-inch form factor makes it relatively easy to carry, as well as not too bulky.

In addition to being smaller, you will no longer have to deal with noises or vibrations. This plex external hard drive comes with a read speed of 180MB/s and thanks to the optimization for NAS, this best external hard drive for plex works more efficiently and faster compared to the others. The cache size is 64MB and the storage size varies on your choice meaning it is also available at a max of 18TB.

For more convenience, you can also check the hard drive’s characteristics, likely the temperature, health, and performance with the built-in Iron Wolf health management software. In terms of reliability Seagate hard drives have always been reliable and for business-specific usage, the Iron Wolf NAS drives are perfect as they come with a more budget-friendly price tag.

WD 5TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive (Image credit: Amazon)

WD 5TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive

Best Premium High Performance Hard Drive

WD My Passport Hard Drives provide very good value for money and are more reliable than most other hard disk drives. The best thing about this best HDD for plex is that it is portable, so we can plug it in either on Mac or PC. As opposed to the Seagate IronWolf, the WD My Passport can be used on any PC or laptop via its USB port, thanks to its USB 3.0 Port which provides a maximum transfer speed of 5.0GBPS don’t worry if your PC doesn’t have one of these ports because it is fully compatible with USB2.0 which will not give you the maximum transfer speed like 5.0 GBPS but will be faster than a normal transfer speed. In addition to Windows 7 to 10, Chrome OS, and Mac OS, the WD is also compatible with these operating systems, but you must first format the drive for Chrome OS to be able to use it.

Other major differences between the Seagate IronWolf and the WD My Passport are that the WD has 1TB more storage than the Seagate IronWolf, as well as the fact that it is relatively small and lightweight which is a plus point here. As of now, WD offers its secure software called WD Discovery Software that uses AES 256-bit hardware encryption code for password protection which means it gives you a good level of protection. Additionally, the WD My Passport is available in three colors and offers storage capacities from 1TB to 5TB. The price changes depending upon the storage type that you select for your needs, so if you want a small storage device, it will cost less than a large one.

WD 10TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive (Image credit: Amazon)

WD 10TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive

Best External Hard Drive

With the WD Elements Desktop External Hard Drive, we have a completely different experience from the other hard drives on our list, since this plex Nvidia shield external hard drive needs its power source, which is a 100-240V power supply included in the box.

As for connecting and transferring data, it uses a USB3.1 Gen 1 port; just like the earlier WD My Passport, it is fully compatible with USB 2.0 as well but similar to it, it provides a low speed of transferring data in USB 2.0 port.

The best hard drive for Plex server comes with a speed of 7200 RPM and has already formatted partitions by NTFS for windows so that you can just easily take it out of the box and instantly plug it into your pc without the need to set it up, but you can reformat it if you want. To plug it in a Mac or Chrome OS it uses the same mechanism as WD My Passport.

The WD Elements Desktop External Hard drive is completely protected from any kind of damage using a case that is covered in black paint. Now if you are not satisfied with the storage capacity of WD My Passport and Seagate IronWolf then don’t worry because WD offers more storage with the WD Elements External Hard Drive which ranges from a minimum of 4TB up to 18TB.

Now with this huge amount of storage you can easily free up more storage from your PC’s internal hard disk and make it much faster and more responsive to your commands.

WD 1TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive (Image credit: Amazon)

WD 1TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive

Best Hard Drive for Media Server

You may not have heard the name of G-Technology, but they also have some amazing products because it is a brand of Western digital that make products specifically for Macs so if you have an Apple Mac book and is looking for a hard drive that will be fully compatible with your Mac then this plex server external hard drive is for you.

The most interesting part of this best 10TB plex media server external hard drive build is, like all Mac products, this external hard drive for plex has an aluminum body which gives it a premium look and feels, and also adds a plus for durability.

In addition, it starts from a storage capacity of 4TB and goes all the way up to 18TB, and for speed, this best Nas hard drive for plex has a transfer rate of up to 250MB/s and RPM speed of 7200, which can write your data much more-quicker.

Now for the connectivity, this best external hard drive for Plex server thing has 2 thunderbolts, 3 ports, and 1 USB 3.1 Gen port, which also adds as a plus for speed, and with the help of these ports, you can connect up to 5 devices simultaneously.

If you love these features and wish that this hard drive for plex server will be compatible with windows, there is a piece of good news it is cheap Drive for plex is compatible with windows also, but the only downside of this cheapest Nas for plex is to do that you have to format the drive for which the company has included built-in software.

Seagate Iron Wolf 3TB NAS Internal Hard Drive (Image credit: Amazon)

Seagate Iron Wolf 3TB NAS Internal Hard Drive

Best Overall Hard Drive

Seagate iron wolf is a top-notch product for storing data because it has some amazing specs on the paper so this best external drive for plex will be a perfect match for you. Now let’s talk about the specs; the Seagate IronWolf Pro is a NAS-compatible drive with an RPM of 7200 and a cache memory of 128Mb, and for transfers, its Seagate media server has a speed of 214 MB/s. In addition, it is a perfect best Nas hard drive for plex for servers that requires 24 hours usage because it is built for this purpose.

This portable plex server iron wolf is specifically built to use in extreme conditions with no noise while consuming less power; with specs like these, you will not experience any delays, lag, or slow performance, but instead, you will get high performance and increased sharing speeds with worry-free data backup even when something goes wrong like power failure you can easily monitor the performance of your drive stats health and many things by using the Iron Wolf health management software which gives you all the info that you need about your drive. This best internal hard drive for media storage has a form factor of 3.5 and weighs around 850G which is a little heavy for a hard drive, so if you are looking for a top product, then Iron Wolf is the product for you. Overall this 4TB external hard disk is the best hard drive for the server.

Seagate 16TB (Image credit: Amazon)

Seagate 16TB

Best Nas Hard Drive for Plex

The Seagate Expansion 16TB Hard Drive may cost you more but considering this external hard drive media server comes with 16TB of storage it does not bother you very much and this external hard drive for plex is an all-in-one solution for all of your space issues. Many other big brands like Western Digital and others offer hard drives with big space but what makes the Seagate Hard drives so special is that they have covered you from all angles with the number one being durability.

Durability is one of the most important factors of an external hard drive and this plex usb hard drive has several upgrades over the 12TB model. This best hard drive for plex media server is protected inside a small case that is made of aluminum which also protects it from water damage and dust particles. Outside is a USB 3.1 connectivity port which is used to connect with a PC or MAC. The cache size consists of 16 and a reading speed of 120MB/s ensures a faster response time.

The process of installing the hard drive is fairly simple as it’s just a plug n play device. You just have to connect the hard drive and don’t have to do anything else or neither make any local drives on this best external HDD for plex but if you want to you can do that through the disk management whereas everything is preloaded from the factory. Automatic Seagate Data Recovery Service is also provided with the Hard Drive in case of any extensive damage.

Seagate Expansion 12TB (Image credit: Amazon)

Seagate Expansion 12TB

Best External hard drive for media center

Running out of space on your PC is the worst problem that one could experience either way you have to buy a new hard drive or you have to delete your old data to gain more space and nobody want to delete their important data which leaves us with one option of buying a new hard drive however it is not as easy as it seems as companies try to manipulate customers which is why I have selected the Seagate Expansion 12TB hard drive for a seamless experience.

Seagate is one of the top manufacturers of hard drives and they are also popular for their product quality. Expansion 12TB hard drive gives you tons of more storage to store your important files and data and since it is an external hard drive you don’t have to worry about installing it inside of your PC. The hard drive utilizes a USB 3.1 connector to connect with the PC. The process is just plugged n play meaning you don’t have to install any additional drivers or software for it.

Many people question the durability of external hard drives and that is why these hard drives come enclosed in a protective casing to protect them from damages like water or dust. The hard drive is also much easier to carry around thanks to its small size. In case any damage occurs to the hard drive Seagate provides Data recovery services so that your data is not lost.

WD 6TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive (Image credit: Amazon)

WD 6TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive

Best External Hard Drive for Plex Server

By using the WD 6TB External Hard Drive, you can easily backup data and make system backups using the software built into the WD Backup for Windows. The 256-bit AES hardware encryption ensures the security of stored files on this Plex media server external hard drive, which simplifies backup processes for both Windows and Mac computers. With its USB 3.0 port, the My Book Desktop drive design for fast data transfer comes standard with exFAT formatting that works with both Windows and Mac systems.

Your content protects with 256-bit AES hardware encryption on the My Book desktop hard drive. Activate password protection on the desktop hard drive and enter your password to save your files. This best plex hard drive is trusted worldwide by millions of people for storing their data. A premium desktop hard drive design for long-term reliability. My Book desktop hard drive comes with WD’s three-year limited warranty, designed to meet WD’s demanding requirements for durability and shock resistance. From the beginning, you can transfer files, save memories, and backup your data straight out of the box. You can help keep your data safe with WD Security and WD Backup software that comes with the hard drive.

Once you unpack your Book hard drive, you can immediately start transferring files, backing up, and saving your memories. It includes WD Backup, WD Security, and Time Machine security software to help protect your data. This external hard drive plex offers the kind of space you need to store your documents, music, photos, and videos that complement your style. My Book drives are portable, attractive, and show a sense of assurance that reflects their reliability. Up to 8TB storage capacity, you can depend on your My Book drives to keep your digital life safe.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are External hard drives good for Plex?

An external hard drive can have its advantages, such as allowing more storage, as well as being suitable for Plex, so it all depends on the user how much space is required.

Is it possible to use a USB drive with Plex?

Yes, you can use both USB and Micro SD storage for PLEX as they both can read and write data on them.

What storage can you use with Plex?

You can’t run any ordinary hard drive with the Plex since it’s a server-based ecosystem so you need an effective hard drive like the Seagate IronWolf series hard drive that is solely designed for these purposes.

Austin Contreras
Hi, My name is Austin Contreras and I'm the Writer of Techfrugal. I have been played games for over 18 years, and I like to share my gaming knowledge with People.
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