Most televisions with USB recording accept a standard external drive, but the format, the maximum capacity and whether the feature exists at all vary by manufacturer and by model — check your TV's own documentation first. The estimate table below converts capacity into recording hours with the arithmetic visible, because the answer depends entirely on your bitrate.
Roughly how many hours a drive holds at a constant bitrate. Broadcast bitrates vary widely by channel, resolution and whether your television re-encodes, so treat these as an order of magnitude and substitute your own figure using the formula below.
| Capacity | at 5 Mbps | at 10 Mbps | at 20 Mbps |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1TB | ~444 hours | ~222 hours | ~111 hours |
| 2TB | ~889 hours | ~444 hours | ~222 hours |
| 4TB | ~1778 hours | ~889 hours | ~444 hours |
| 6TB | ~2667 hours | ~1333 hours | ~667 hours |
| 8TB | ~3556 hours | ~1778 hours | ~889 hours |
hours = (TB × 1,000,000 MB) ÷ (Mbps ÷ 8 MB/s) ÷ 3,600 s
worked example, 1TB at 10 Mbps: 1,000,000 MB ÷ 1.25 MB/s = 800,000 s ÷ 3,600 = ~222 hours
12 in-stock listings · 3.5in, needs a mains adapter, cheapest per TB
Best cost per terabyte here right now: WD My Book 16TB Desktop HDD at $18.69/TB ($299 for 16TB, desktop hdd, used listing). The drive inside it is not disclosed by the maker.
| Model | Capacity | Interface | Inside | Warranty | Condition | $/TB | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD My Book 16TB Desktop HDD | 16TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $18.69 | $299 | Buy |
| WD My Book 22TB Desktop HDD | 22TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $28.75 | $632 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 16TB Desktop HDD | 16TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $30.28 | $484 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 8TB Desktop HDD | 8TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $31.72 | $254 | Buy |
| WD Elements 20TB Desktop HDD | 20TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $33.64 | $673 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 8TB Desktop HDD | 8TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $34.00 | $272 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 10TB Desktop HDD | 10TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $34.21 | $342 | Buy |
| WD Elements 16TB Desktop HDD | 16TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $34.96 | $559 | Buy |
| WD Elements 20TB Desktop HDD | 20TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $35.02 | $700 | Buy |
| Seagate One Touch 8TB Desktop HDD | 8TB | USB-C | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $36.25 | $290 | Buy |
| WD Elements 10TB Desktop HDD | 10TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $36.46 | $365 | Buy |
| WD My Book 8TB Desktop HDD | 8TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $37.50 | $300 | Buy |
“Inside” is not disclosed by any maker for these products and the contents vary by batch, so we state that rather than guessing — see what the community has found by opening them. Warranty shows a dash because the makers' warranty pages did not resolve through our source-verification path; read the term on the maker's page for the exact model. Interface is the maker's own specification string, not a speed measurement.
12 in-stock listings · 2.5in, runs on USB power alone
Best cost per terabyte here right now: Seagate Expansion 24TB Portable HDD at $30.10/TB ($722 for 24TB, portable hdd, new listing). The drive inside it is not disclosed by the maker.
| Model | Capacity | Interface | Inside | Warranty | Condition | $/TB | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate Expansion 24TB Portable HDD | 24TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $30.10 | $722 | Buy |
| WD My Passport 4TB Portable HDD | 4TB | USB 3.1 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $31.88 | $128 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 20TB Portable HDD | 20TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $32.50 | $650 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 20TB Portable HDD | 20TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $37.50 | $750 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 6TB Portable HDD | 6TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $39.17 | $235 | Buy |
| Seagate One Touch 4TB Portable HDD | 4TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $39.75 | $159 | Buy |
| WD Elements 5TB Portable HDD | 5TB | USB 3.2 GEN 1 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $40.39 | $202 | Buy |
| WD My Passport 4TB Portable HDD | 4TB | USB 3.1 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $41.25 | $165 | Buy |
| WD Elements 6TB Portable HDD | 6TB | USB 3.2 GEN 1 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $41.50 | $249 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 12TB Portable HDD | 12TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $41.58 | $499 | Buy |
| Seagate Expansion 24TB Portable HDD | 24TB | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $41.67 | $1000 | Buy |
| WD My Passport 5TB Portable HDD | 5TB | USB 3.1 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $42.63 | $213 | Buy |
“Inside” is not disclosed by any maker for these products and the contents vary by batch, so we state that rather than guessing — see what the community has found by opening them. Warranty shows a dash because the makers' warranty pages did not resolve through our source-verification path; read the term on the maker's page for the exact model. Interface is the maker's own specification string, not a speed measurement.
This is the use case where we can least tell you what will work, and pretending otherwise would be the wrong kind of helpful.
USB recording on televisions is not a standard. Each manufacturer implements it differently, restricts it differently, and in some regions does not implement it at all for legal reasons. Maximum supported capacity varies by model. Some sets require the drive to be formatted by the television and refuse anything else. Some support only certain USB port specifications, and some sets have USB ports that are for service or media playback only and will not record at all.
So the reliable sequence is: read your television's manual or support page for USB recording, find the maximum supported capacity, find whether the set formats the drive itself, and buy against that. Any list of 'TVs that work with this drive' you find online — including one we could write — is a snapshot of models somebody tested, not a compatibility matrix.
The one thing that is generally true across implementations is that the television takes the drive over completely. It formats it into a proprietary layout, the recordings are usually encrypted to that specific set, and the drive is not readable on a computer afterwards. That has a consequence worth internalising: recordings made on one television are typically unplayable on another, even the same model, and if the set dies the recordings die with it.
That single fact should shape the purchase. This is not archival storage. It is a large, convenient buffer for things you will watch soon, and anything you want to keep permanently needs to leave the television by another route.
The estimate table above converts capacity into recording hours at three example bitrates, and the formula is printed underneath it so you can redo the calculation with your own number rather than trusting ours.
The arithmetic is simple: a terabyte is a million megabytes, a bitrate in megabits per second divided by eight gives megabytes per second, and dividing one by the other gives seconds, which divide down into hours. A drive holding a stream at 10 megabits per second holds roughly 222 hours per terabyte.
What makes it an estimate rather than a specification is the bitrate, and the range is wide. Standard-definition broadcasts sit at the low end; high-definition broadcast streams are typically in the middle; and a set recording an uncompressed or lightly compressed high-bitrate source is at the top or beyond it. Most broadcast recording will land closer to the middle figure than the extremes.
Some televisions also re-encode rather than recording the broadcast stream directly, which changes the rate again and usually downward. Whether yours does is in the same documentation as the compatibility answer, and it is worth a look if you are sizing a drive precisely.
The practical version: use the middle column as a working figure, then buy a rung above what the arithmetic suggests. Recording buffers fill faster than people expect because nobody deletes anything, and going up a capacity is usually cheaper per terabyte anyway.
A television sits in a fixed position next to a power socket, which makes this an easier decision than it is for a computer.
A desktop external is the natural fit on cost: it is the cheapest storage per terabyte in our tables, it reaches the largest capacities, and the mains adapter that makes it non-portable is irrelevant next to a television that also has a power cable. If your set supports the capacity, this is usually the right buy.
The argument for a portable drive is not portability, it is power and space. A bus-powered 2.5-inch drive runs off the television's USB port with no second adapter and no second socket, which matters when the TV is wall-mounted or the socket situation behind it is already grim. It also runs cooler and quieter, which is a genuine consideration for a device sitting under a television in a quiet room.
There is a caveat on bus-powered drives with televisions specifically: some sets provide less current on their USB ports than a computer does, and an under-powered drive will mount intermittently or fail to spin up. If your set's documentation mentions a powered drive or a Y-cable, take that seriously — it is the most common cause of TV recording setups that half-work.
Noise is worth a sentence of its own. A mechanical drive in a quiet living room is audible during seeks in a way it is not in an office, and a desktop drive with a fan is more so. If the room is quiet and the television is the reason you are in it, that is a real quality-of-life consideration rather than a technical one.
The most useful thing this page can do is stop somebody making a specific mistake, so here it is directly: a television recording drive is not a backup drive, an archive, or a way to build a media library.
The recordings are usually encrypted to the specific television that made them and stored in a proprietary layout. Plug the drive into a computer and you will typically be offered the chance to format it, which is the operating system saying it does not recognise anything on there. The recordings cannot be copied off in any straightforward way, and that is a deliberate design decision rather than a limitation to be worked around.
So the drive is dedicated. It does the television's job and nothing else, and anything you want to keep permanently needs to be acquired another way. Trying to make one drive serve both purposes ends with a format prompt and a bad afternoon.
The corollary is a cheerful one: because it is a dedicated buffer for things you will watch and delete, this is a use case where a used external at a good price is a perfectly sensible purchase. There is nothing irreplaceable on it. Our deals page tracks used and new listings separately, and this is one of the few roles where the used column is straightforwardly the smart place to look.
For the storage that does hold things you cannot replace, our backup guidance covers the arrangement that keeps them.
Not necessarily, and your television decides rather than the drive. USB recording is not a standard: maximum supported capacity, required formatting, port specification and whether the feature exists at all vary by manufacturer, model and region. Read your set's own documentation for USB recording before buying — any online compatibility list is a snapshot of what somebody tested.
Roughly 222 hours at a constant 10 megabits per second, which is a reasonable working figure for high-definition broadcast. The estimate table above runs the same arithmetic across capacities at three bitrates with the formula shown, because the real answer depends entirely on your broadcast's bitrate and on whether your set re-encodes.
Usually not. Most televisions encrypt recordings to the specific set that made them and store them in a proprietary layout, so a computer will offer to format the drive rather than read it, and another television — even the same model — typically cannot play them. If the set dies, the recordings die with it. Treat this drive as a buffer, not an archive.
Desktop on cost — cheapest per terabyte in this cluster, largest capacities, and the mains adapter is irrelevant next to a television that is already plugged in. Portable if the socket situation behind a wall-mounted set is difficult, since bus-powered drives need no second adapter. Watch for TVs whose USB ports supply less current than a computer, which makes bus-powered drives mount intermittently.
This is one of the few roles where it is straightforwardly sensible. The drive holds things you will watch and delete, nothing on it is irreplaceable, and the television reformats it anyway. Our deals page tracks used and new listings as separate price series so you can see which is actually cheap.
Check the documentation. Some sets supply less current on their USB ports than a computer does, and an under-powered bus-powered drive mounts intermittently or fails to spin up — which looks exactly like a faulty drive. If your set's manual mentions a powered drive or a Y-cable, that is the answer to a problem you would otherwise spend an evening on.
Specification claims on this page were checked against the pages below on 4 August 2026. Where a widely-repeated figure did not survive that check, we report what the source says now and say so in the text rather than repeating the familiar number.