External Hard Drives - What to avoid?

[MacRobert10]

Same thing happened to me with a cheap USB hub. It was advertised as 3.0 but clearly wasn't. Some no-name brand if I recall correctly.

 

[WorkerBee2015]

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but if you've got a USB 3 system, make sure the drive or housing you get is USB 3 as well and test it to make sure. I bought an aftermarket enclosure that claimed it was USB 3 and put an SSD in it and it was clearly bottlenecking at about the data rate used for USB 2. I replaced it with a better quality enclosure and the problem was fixed.

You need to get a hold of the specs for anything you're looking at. If they're sparse or unavailable there's probably a reason for that.

 

[TheBSDGuy]

... If they're sparse or unavailable there's probably a reason for that.

Probably, or just plain cheap. Another stunt I've come across is to put a SATA I interface in the unit.