AIRANKS — The Authoritative Rankings for AI Web Content

AIRANKS measures AI visibility: we ask AI models real product and service questions, capture the complete answers as immutable observations, and publish what they contain — which brands were mentioned, which domains were cited, and which exact pages were linked. Every domain gets an AIR score from 1–10 (a decile of visibility in the active dataset; 0 means insufficient data), with the methodology in the open.

AIR

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The Question

← all rankings / dataset COBALT

What is the best external hard drive

Samsung takes the top spot in 100.0% of resamples. Of 10 ranked brands, only 5 hold a position we'd call firm.

0
answers sampled
0
brands named
1,000
bootstrap resamples

Who AI Cites For This Question

25 cited pages · bars vs the leader

Best External Hard Drives (2026): SSD to Store Data, Video, and More | WIREDwww.wired.comwired.com/story/best-portable-exte…s/?utm=airanks.net40
Best external hard drive of 2026: Expert picks based on real-world testingwww.techradar.comtechradar.com/news/best-external-d…es?utm=airanks.net24
SanDisk Extreme 1TB just dropped in price again - and it's one of our top portable rugged SSDswww.techradar.comtechradar.com/computing/storage-ba…nt?utm=airanks.net18
Best external drives 2026: Fast SSDs and roomy hard drives | PCWorldwww.pcworld.compcworld.com/article/406861/best-ex…ml?utm=airanks.net17
Portable SSD T7 Shield 1TB USB 3.2 | Samsung USwww.samsung.comsamsung.com/us/computing/memory-st…m/?utm=airanks.net9
These are the 5 best external SSDs we've tested to free up space on your laptop and phonewww.tomsguide.comtomsguide.com/best-picks/best-exte…es?utm=airanks.net8

The Ranking, With Its Uncertainty

Samsung locked Samsung — ci 1.00–1.00 · n=115 · 100.0% of resamples held this rank · named in 98% of answers
Western Digital locked Western Digital — ci 0.89–0.89 · n=115 · 100.0% of resamples held this rank · named in 72% of answers
SanDisk firm SanDisk — ci 0.67–0.78 · n=115 · 91.1% of resamples held this rank · named in 47% of answers
Seagate firm Seagate — ci 0.67–0.78 · n=115 · 91.1% of resamples held this rank · named in 44% of answers
Crucial locked Crucial — ci 0.56–0.56 · n=115 · 99.6% of resamples held this rank · named in 11% of answers
LaCie gathering LaCie — gathering data, n=115. No bootstrap interval yet.
Corsair gathering Corsair — gathering data, n=115. No bootstrap interval yet.
ADATA gathering ADATA — gathering data, n=115. No bootstrap interval yet.
Toshiba gathering Toshiba — gathering data, n=115. No bootstrap interval yet.
Kingston gathering Kingston — gathering data, n=115. No bootstrap interval yet.

The Incomparability Lattice

what the intervals separate, not what the list claims

An edge means one brand's interval sits strictly above another's — zero overlap. No edge between two brands is not a gap in the drawing, it is the finding: their intervals overlap, and the bootstrap cannot tell them apart. Brands on the same rung are incomparable, not tied — the ranking above orders them anyway because a list has to print a total order; this diagram is the honest version.

Samsung

1.00–1.00

Western Digital

0.89–0.89

SanDisk

0.67–0.78

Seagate

0.67–0.78

Crucial

0.56–0.56