External Drive Suggestions

Bruce!

Uh, WD is the only one I use. Passport series has never let me down, I have some green drives that are close to a decade old by now.

Will only ever recommend WD drives.

 

First, try a new, quality cable with your existing drive. I never have disconnects with any of the many externals I use.

If you need a new drive, consider the:

WD Elements Portable
https://www.wdc.com/products/portable-storage/wd-elements-portable.html

I have had great luck will many WD externals over the years but in the last few years they have started polluting their drives with proprietary and unremovable partitions with preinstalled and unavoidable junkware applications. The "Elements" series seems to be the only one remaining that does not have this crap integrated into the drive hardware.

 

I'm -NOT- a Western Digital fan. Not a fan of Seagate, either.

I like Fuji, Toshiba, and HGST (former Hitachi).

I wouldn't buy a "prepackaged" drive. Instead, I'd pick a "bare" drive of choice, and put it into an enclosure that I picked as well. I've NEVER seen a prepackaged drive that was designed to be user-accessible. If you "put it together", and ever have problems, then you know how to "take it apart" as well…

 

People swear by the samsung T3 SSDs.

 

Sandisk also has a line of small external USB3 SSDs:
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00ZTRY532?tag=delt-20

 

I have been looking at the ones on the Apple Store's website, but haven't yet taken the plunge. I have one that has been good to me, but wanted to upgrade to a USB-C one, since to my (limited, because this is not my area of expertise) understanding the transfer speeds would be faster.

 

Do you have a need or a desire for something solid state? And, when you say portable, I am guessing you would prefer a 2.5-inch form factor over a 3.5-inch?

If a 2.5-inch HDD is mandatory over 3.5, the 1TB size works, and you want USB-C-to-USB-C, I would recommend

Western Digital 1TB Black 7200 RPM HDD (note that as a 7200 RPM drive, it is both slightly faster and slightly louder than a 5400 RPM drive)

or, the HGST Travel Star 7k100 7200 RPM HDD

and a

Oyen Digital USB-C enclosure

 

I'm with Fishrrman on this one. I prefer HGST (formerly Hitachi) when it comes to any kind of internal or external mechanical hard drive. IBM developed some awesome hard drive technology back in the 80s. They eventually sold it to Hitachi, who then sold it to HGST a few years later, who then got gobbled up by Western Digital back in 2012. Oh, and for those interested, HGST owns and produces the G-Drive line of drives. For what it's worth, I've bought several of their drives and have never had a problem.

 

G-Drive makes a nice 1TB 7200 rpm USB-C mobile external drive that comes with both a USB-C to USB-C cable and a USB-C to USB-A cable, which is very convenient if one has computers which use both kinds of ports. I can plug into my 2015 15" rMBP with the USB-C to USB-A cable and retrieve something, then swap cables and stick the files right into my 2016 12" rMB. The USB-C to USB-C cable also works quite nicely with my Samsung T3 external SSD drive as well (for some reason Samsung only provides one USB-C to USB-A cable with their device).