11bravo

Rather than buy a manufactured external HDD, I prefer to build my own. That way, I can make sure the external case has a fan and I can select the drive that goes inside.

Rosewill external HDD case, with fan, on sale at Newegg through 8/7/20, $39.99 + tax. I can't YET speak to the newer higher capacity model this is, up to 8TB, but I have a number of the smaller capacity 4TB versions, and they work great to keep an external HDD cool. It's a small fan, but works wonders. When I provision my HDD's, that's 24 hours of continuous read/writes, they stay cool in this case. Yes, it's 10 screws to open and install, but if you can use a screwdriver, it's not difficult (well, the 2 SMALL panel screws are a pain...). Heat is the enemy of electronics and a fan is essential. Compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Win 2000 / ME / XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10
Mac OS 8.6 /9.x / 10.x / Linux 2.4.1.0 or later

https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rx-358-u3c-blk/p/N82E16817182247

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

👍👍 Right answer!

fjdarling Loc: Mesa, Arizona, USA

They're also sold under the brand name "Sabrent", and possibly under other brand names as well. They're good stuff.

juan_uy Loc: Uruguay

Very good suggestion, thanks.

It even looks very good (except by their logo ).

If the use case is for an external non-portable solution, then it's great. For portable solutions I would prefer HDD built for that, and nowadays probably an SSD.

11bravo

Another 48 hour sale on this external case, $35.99, better than the original deal posted above:

https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rx-358-u3c-blk/p/N82E16817182247

Sale ends Wednesday, 9/2/2020

Had bought 1 during the 1st sale, just bought another. Will put an WD 8TB NAS RED in each for photo storage and backup. Had used the one I bought on 8/6/20 to provision a WD 6TB RED destined for my HTPC; kept the drive cool during 20 hrs of continuous read/writes during the provisioning.