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 portable hard drive

Samsung takes the top spot in 100.0% of resamples. Of 8 ranked brands, only 4 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 drive of 2026: Expert picks based on real-world testingwww.techradar.comtechradar.com/news/best-external-d…es?utm=airanks.net35
Portable SSD T7 Shield 1TB USB 3.2 | Samsung USwww.samsung.comsamsung.com/us/computing/memory-st…m/?utm=airanks.net26
Best External Hard Drives (2026): SSD to Store Data, Video, and More | WIREDwww.wired.comwired.com/story/best-portable-exte…s/?utm=airanks.net20
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.net15
PRO SERIESmicron™ crucial®Crucial X9 Pro Portablewww.crucial.comcrucial.com/content/dam/crucial/ss…df?utm=airanks.net9

The Ranking, With Its Uncertainty

Samsung locked Samsung — ci 1.00–1.00 · n=113 · 100.0% of resamples held this rank · named in 97% of answers
Western Digital locked Western Digital — ci 0.86–0.86 · n=113 · 100.0% of resamples held this rank · named in 74% of answers
SanDisk locked SanDisk — ci 0.71–0.71 · n=113 · 100.0% of resamples held this rank · named in 51% of answers
Seagate soft Seagate — ci 0.43–0.57 · n=113 · 73.8% of resamples held this rank · named in 27% of answers
Crucial soft Crucial — ci 0.29–0.57 · n=113 · 66.7% of resamples held this rank · named in 19% of answers
Toshiba firm Toshiba — ci 0.29–0.43 · n=113 · 89.0% of resamples held this rank · named in 11% of answers
LaCie gathering LaCie — gathering data, n=113. No bootstrap interval yet.
Kingston gathering Kingston — gathering data, n=113. 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

0.86–0.86

SanDisk

0.71–0.71

Seagate

0.43–0.57

Crucial

0.29–0.57

Toshiba

0.29–0.43