Hey folks,

So, I'm looking around for a portable SSD for my M3. I'm leaning towards a 4 TB, and I'm seeing that the prices for them run around $300. Does anyone have suggestions for a good portable external SSD? I plan to do a lot of photo editing, and some limited video.

If you have money to burn, buy as big as you can. If you are constrained by budget, but only as much as you need. What size storage do you have now? Do you need 4TB? I have 50TB of mechanical externals at my desktop, that I only power on when I need them, mostly for archive purposes.

>> phunguss said:

If you have money to burn, buy as big as you can. If you are constrained by budget, but only as much as you need. What size storage do you have now? Do you need 4TB? I have 50TB of mechanical externals at my desktop, that I only power on when I need them, mostly for archive purposes. Click to expand...

Right now, this one looks good. I've used Crucial in the past-I replaced the dying HD in my 2011 27" iMac with a 2 TB SSD.

>> phunguss said:

If you have money to burn, buy as big as you can. If you are constrained by budget, but only as much as you need. What size storage do you have now? Do you need 4TB? I have 50TB of mechanical externals at my desktop, that I only power on when I need them, mostly for archive purposes. Click to expand...

Also-I want to try an external SSD instead of going mechanical. I know there are cheap mechanical HDs out there, but that's old tech.

I recently was looking for the best USB Thumbdrive sold today and after much research ended up buying the 1TB T31 from SK Hynix, who make extremely fast and low power SSD replacements for older Macs like the 2015 15" MacBook Pro. This is the best review out there on the T31. I opted for the T31 rather than the fabulous looking X31 only because I already own a 2TB SanDisk Portable Extreme SSD (which, like the SK Hynix, is also USB), and I find that I yank out the cable by accident because the SSD dangles down under my MBP in bed and I forget and it gets yanked. With a USB stick firing out the side, it looks precarious, especially with a USBA-to-C adapter, but I've never smacked a USB stick against anything before, which is why I went with the T31 in the first place. Here's another review of both models.

Sadly, the SK Hynix drives only go up to 1TB in size, by since my own objective was a fast "Thumbdrive" I didn't mind that upper limit. The SanDisk goes up to 4TB, but some people have reported data loss issues with them over the past year. I've never had data loss with my SanDisk, but mine is an older model (and slower) than the one I linked for you and is no longer sold.

SanDisk is probably the biggest name when it comes to external flash storage, and while in general their products are decent, they had some issues with a few models and their parent company, Western Digital, didn't handle the situation well. Crucial hasn't been as big a player with external SSDs, but could be a good option, as could Samsung. Regardless of what you pick, make sure you have a robust backup solution in place if the data on the drive is something you care about.

Thanks for the responses, everyone! :)

How about something like a 4tb Samsung 990 pro into a quality TB4 enclosure?

>> Certificate of Excellence said:

How about something like a 4tb Samsung 990 pro into a quality TB4 enclosure? Click to expand...