Best SSD external drives

[jpdemers]

They say you get what you pay for but it may be that you are just paying extra for the brand.

There aren't all that many makers of HDs out there, so while the no-name drives might have a cheap case and generic circuit board and switches, they'll usually contain a big name on the actual mechanism. I do see some dodgy-looking Chinese-made SSDs out there, and I'd be wary of those things.

For backup use, speed is rarely an issue, unless for some reason you need to stand there and wait for the backup to complete - e.g. you're planning to leave with your laptop as soon as it's backed up. My backups take place at night when nothing else is pressing, and for those I still have spinners. An external drive carrying media files that I want to work with is a different matter, and I use an SSD for that: a Samsung EVO in a generic case.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

There aren't all that many makers of HDs out there, so while the no-name drives might have a cheap case and generic circuit board and switches, they'll usually contain a big name on the actual mechanism.

If we were talking about rotating disk hard drives, that would be true. There are only three main manufacturers of RDHD internal mechanisms.

But this thread has been discussing external SSD's. There are a LOT of manufacturers of the internal mechanisms in external SSD's. Big manufacturers, small manufacturers, manufacturers from different countries, manufacturers with all sorts of different quality standards, and different form factors for the internal SSD's themselves.

See:

List of solid-state drive manufacturers - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

For backup use, speed is rarely an issue,...

Yeah? Try making an external backup to an SSD that has no DRAM, and try restoring your data from it without losing your mind from how horribly slow it is.

https://tidbits.com/2020/04/27/six-lessons-learned-from-dealing-with-an-imacs-dead-ssd/