jbk224 Loc: Long Island, NY

I 2nd the suggestion.

GLSmith Loc: Tampa, Fl

The "Spinning Disk" technology is rapidly on its way out & has been replaced in large by the SSD (Solid State Disk) I use 2 for LightRoom on my MacPro & both of them (4 TB each) can easily fit in my shirt pocket

bnsf

Wife was on Walmart website grocery shopping and when she got done went into electronics and they have a Toshiba 40TB external USB drive for under $100.00. This drive works in either Windows or Mac OS. You just have to set the drives bios and then format it to your OS and you are ready to use it.

CliffMcKenzie Loc: Lake Athens Texas

A different take - the writer did not mention if the Mac laptop was their primary processing computer or not. Responses assume primary and I would guess the same.

A master photographer had his car broken into and all equipment stolen while doing a traveling shoot. Everything including all the work was lost. His equipment was insured but he lost all his work. Today, he carries a 1TB flash drive in his pocket.

Just got mine, $89 top brand and speed is great as it is USB-c. By the way...also insure all your equipment. Amazon, B&H and Adorama will provide your receipts and it cost little.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

But it has been shown that SSDs do degrade over time.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

It does depend to some extent on your needs. I agree with BurkPhoto that OWC or Macsales.com is a good source. I purchased two ThunderBay 8s with 42 TB of spinning disks each, and I use GoodSync to keep them in sync. One is in my office and the other in a concrete room in the basement. All are connected directly to my Mac Studio via fiber optic cables purchased from B&H.

The ThunderBay 8s are set up as RAID 5s.

home brewer Loc: Fort Wayne, Indiana

I like the Sandisk ssd 2TB or 4TB if you have a large requirement and so far have had no issues. I have only had the 4 TB drive for a month. I have used Sandisk products for years with no issues
But: on B&H site it seems that 12 to 13 % of reviews are very negative with sudden crashes. Amazon has about 6% very unhappy and 9% for ratings less than 4 stars.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

I had a T7, but it was far too easy to misplace due to it's very small size and grey color.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

I have a MacBook M1 Pro with an internal 512GB SSD. I also have a 3TB external portable drive as well as a 4TB external hard drive. I use a 'brick' to connect the MacBook to the rest of my set-up including the external drives, a large monitor, CD/DVD drive, a couple of scanners (film and flatbed), keyboard/mouse, etc.

The 3TB portable drive is a Western Digital Elements drive. When we travel, it goes with me in my computer bag. It's where my complete photo archive is located, which currently consists of 56,456 images.

The 4TB hard drive is my back-up where I have a second up-to-date copy of my photo archive along with back-ups of all my files and data. It's a G-Technology 'G-Drive' and when I'm on the road, it goes in my gun safe.

I've also got an older 2TB portable drive where I keep a third copy of my photo archive (I update it every couple of months) and it's kept in a fireproof document lockbox that's also in the gun safe. I have a forth copy of my photo archive, which is updated once a year or so, which our oldest son keeps for me in his gun safe in Texas. It consists of a couple of high capacity thumb drives and when I see him, I swap him an updated set for the older ones and then refresh them the next time I see him.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Not typically in use by individuals. The issue with current SSDs is the amount of write/erase cycles is limited, BUT the max number is so high that you’ll never approach it unless you’re running a server farm for multiple clients. For example the max terabytes written for the popular Samsung 980 is 600TB for a 1TB drive. That means you’d have to write the ENTIRE drive 600 times before you exceed the spec. For reference, I have Intel SSDs that are almost 10 years old and never approached the limit. It’s just not a concern anymore. Note too that the reference you cited is a from a “paper” from a company making a product called DynaMaxIO to monitor SSDs, so consider the source.

neillaubenthal

As Bill says…OWC. If you want a large 3.5 inch spinner for Time Machine or storing copies of a lot of stuff…I got one of their 20TB models with an enterprise class drive in it. For on the road use…one of the small SSDs, either the Envoy SX or Envoy FX or the new Express 1 M2. The latter is a smidgeon faster but slightly less portable and doesn't have the nice rounded edges of the first 2.

And as noted…the Samsung T7 or T7 shield is also a very good buy…smaller than any of the above but it's only USB 3 instead of Thunderbolt but for a lot of uses that's plenty fast enough anyway. The T9s are more expensive but since they're USB 3.2 2x2 and no current Mac has that interface you won't get the benefit of their extra speed…at least according to one web page I saw that on.

It really depends on what the intended use of the external is…and whether speed or capacity or portability is more important.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I compliment you for a solid backup plan, but I’d consider something other than USB drives for your remote DR copy (like maybe a major cloud provider) - USB thumb drives aren’t really a solid archive media.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

I'm thinking of buying another portable drive for my disaster back-up. Currently, my full photo archive is only about 800GB so I could buy a 1TB portable drive ($54 for a WD drive on Amazon).

BTW, I have an iCloud account so technically I've got a fifth back-uo

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Excellent.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

That's why all my backup drives are spinning platter hard drives. More space, lower cost, better longevity.

For WORKING drives, I use SSDs or M.2 NVMe drives. I've never had an SSD failure. But that's probably because I thwart Murphy and his law by backing up redundantly!

There is no sense to using conventional drives for high speed workflows. I do photo editing, video editing, and audio recording/post production. Nothing fancy, and not high-end pro studio stuff, but YouTube quality. USB-C 3.2 SSD drives are fine for that.

All of Apple's new Macs have SSD storage. The current estimates of life indicate that most Mac SSDs will outlast the useful life of the computer by several years. (The useful life of the Mac is generally regarded to be five to seven years after the last date of sale for that model. Once Apple quits supporting the model with MacOS full version upgrades, they continue security updates for a couple of years. Beyond that, it isn't safe to use that model on the Internet.)