Hello

I am in need of a new 2TB External SSD, any recommendations would be appreciated

Thank you

 

Because why would I want HDD? I ditched those years ago. Gotta love it when people question other peoples choices

 

I have a Transcend 2tb and 4tb both HDD that have lasted me 10 years now.

They do have SSD as well.

 

Last edited: May 6, 2024

I use this. I have three of them, although mine are the 4TB version. They're durable and small

https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Portable-Photographers-MU-PE2T0R-AM/dp/B09VLJ7VBM

 

Sorry If I offended you mate - I just gave your openion on an external SSD and prices.
I´ll sertenly keep from doing that in the future

 

No worries mate, I'm just in a right panic at the moment

 

on budget: cheap USB 3.0 (=3.2 gen 1) SATA enclosure + Samsung 870 EVO 2TB
best: good USB 3.2 gen 2x2, or Thunderbolt (if you have Mac) NVME enclosure + Samsung 990 PRO 2TB

that way you can replace either enclosure or SSD in case of either fails

alternative options of external SSDs:
cheap: Samsung T5 EVO
faster: Samsung T9 (cheaper than T7 actually)

 

T7 has been succeeded with T9

 

I used a NVME external enclosurer and mounted an NVME ssd into it.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08R752N5Q/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1



I used the Crucial 1tb for mine, I think the 2tb is 129$ now

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B25LZGGW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

just search 2tb nvme on amazon and see whats cheaper and what hast the best MTBF rating
since you are using it externally it doesn't need to have the highest throughput for NVME bus, since the usb3 will throttle the transfer speeds.

 

+1 for T7. I have a few of these too and they strike a nice price to performance ratio. All formatted to APFS.

I believe Macs (which OP uses from his previous posts) don’t support USB 3.2 Gen2x2. So you won’t benefit from a T9 actually, which is why I got a bunch of T7s.

 

few words of warning: make sure the SSD has its own DRAM cache and its own power loss protection - else you're risking not only low speeds, but also data loss or even disk failure

 

Newer Macs support USB 4 (and Thunderbolt). My 2018 Macbook is USB 3.x (it could be 3.0, 3.1, prolly not 3.2 2x2). But the speed I get with my 4TB T7 drives is pretty dang fast. The most important thing for my personal use is that it has never even hiccuped with anything. I'm just so impressed with that!

 

As long as you buy a reliable reputable name brand you should be fine. Samsung, Silicon Power, Kingston, Lexar, are brands I use and none have ever failed yet,

 

I pretty much exclusively use Samsung 800 series EVO's. Btw, HDD's are far from passé.. Dunno what planet you're living on... Until SSD (and Nvme too for all that matter) prices come down to a respectable level, HDD's prices @ TerraByte is still the best value going - mostly in the higher capacity realms like 3-5 TerraByte range and higher...

 

Last edited: May 6, 2024

The T7 was reported as easily overheating and shut down with concentrated use. How is the T9? I need something to transfer a large number of audio files from one continent to another. There will be the moment when the destination will copy everything from the T9. It would be useful to know if Samsung has overcome the heating problem. Do you have any notions about that? thnx.

 

a nice slab of aluminum makes a great heatsink and a good place to place external drives when using them extensively. You can salvage them from various electronics before recycling/trashing them, also ebay etc. Some old hard drives used aluminum chassis, I use an old aluminum chassis under my router to pull the heat away,also one on top.

when buying an external nvme case,look for an aluminum or titanium with coupling tape for bonding the nvme to the case to use it as a heatsink. Prolonged read/write cycles will raise the NVME temps, run a fan over the case if in doubt, also split copying jobs into batches to give the drive temps time to drop back to normal between transfer batches.

heat is the enemy of all electronics, if you can cool your gear, you can usually lengthen its life span considerably

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2025

to add to what @Strat4ever said I've used Western Digital and Samsung for years without any failures or issues.