What is the best external ssd for around 100 or less?

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Any help will be awesome

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Just the one which has the biggest size. As external drive the speed is limited by the interface... In normal use endurance is a theoretical value, your computer will die before... And by then the prize went down to a fifth for twice the size. Just never forget to make backups...

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Tj Shredder wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 3:15 pm Just the one which has the biggest size. As external drive the speed is limited by the interface... In normal use endurance is a theoretical value, your computer will die before... And by then the prize went down to a fifth for twice the size. Just never forget to make backups...
Agreed. People make far too much of SSDs 'wearing out'. Just get the biggest one you can for the money.

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Last edited by quietzone on Sun Sep 13, 2020 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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100 what?

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Not 100 Watt, SSDs don’t need that much power...

Or: 100 Kopekas about $ 2.50... (Chinese dollars...) What did you think?

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The Samsung T5 externals can't be beat. 500 G for under $90 and the 1T is under $180. I've had two of the 500s for over a year and never a hiccup. Tiny and sturdy. Never had any unexpected moments mounting, reading or writing. The best part is that even though there are newer, faster SSDs, I literally couldn't benefit by having them for recording and mixing.

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Seems that the Samsung 500 is the best bet. Anything else will pull you over the price-point but I've been using Samsung for my SSD's for a LONG time and they are solid.

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Tj Shredder wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 3:15 pm Just the one which has the biggest size. As external drive the speed is limited by the interface...
Have to disagree. Not with the speed inference, but that other than size it won't matter. There's much in drivers and firmware that can make a drive seem downright flakey in a rig with random CPU and OS and fine in a more compatible one, much moreso than a mechanical drive. I would say scour for anecdotal tales of folks with your same setup for success stories and non-successes of the drive. Some SSDs are great in a Linux or Windows business environment but aren't going to behave with a Mac DAW. The best part about the Samsung externals is that they see to have come up with probably the best across the board compatibility. I would wager that about half of the drives on that list have OS X issues and a company that has no Mac support. But even on Windows rigs I would check. I've read enough posts about xxxxxxxx drives misbehaving, probably due to crappy drivers and not anything physical, to eliminate them from my options.

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But this is about USB drives so they won't suffer from those issues, not to the same extent anyway. The other thing is that with the internet, you can find good and bad experiences about absolutely everything but that doesn't make them common or widespread. Just think about it, 1% of Windows 10 users is about a million people so you could find a million bad experiences but it would still mean your chances were 1 in 100 that you'd have the same problem.
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To save money I purchased two Crucial MX500 and put them inside inexpensive enclosures. I don't know if there's notable disadvantages to using internal SSDs with an enclosure vs. external SSDs, but I haven't run into any issues.

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spigmu wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 3:33 am
Tj Shredder wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 3:15 pm Just the one which has the biggest size. As external drive the speed is limited by the interface...
Have to disagree. Not with the speed inference, but that other than size it won't matter. There's much in drivers and firmware that can make a drive seem downright flakey in a rig with random CPU and OS and fine in a more compatible one, much moreso than a mechanical drive. I would say scour for anecdotal tales of folks with your same setup for success stories and non-successes of the drive. Some SSDs are great in a Linux or Windows business environment but aren't going to behave with a Mac DAW. The best part about the Samsung externals is that they see to have come up with probably the best across the board compatibility. I would wager that about half of the drives on that list have OS X issues and a company that has no Mac support. But even on Windows rigs I would check. I've read enough posts about xxxxxxxx drives misbehaving, probably due to crappy drivers and not anything physical, to eliminate them from my options.
Usb enclosures can have issues, but not the drives. If they have issues, bring them back, they are faulty and must not be sold to anybody. If they are faulty, they don‘t follow the standards, even if windows is forgiving I would never want such a drive...

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Tj Shredder wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:02 pm Usb enclosures can have issues, but not the drives. If they have issues, bring them back, they are faulty and must not be sold to anybody. If they are faulty, they don‘t follow the standards, even if windows is forgiving I would never want such a drive...
The implication that the SSDs don't have programming issues/incompatibilities, only enclosures do, isn't correct. SSD controllers reside on the SSD, not on the enclosure, and what controller a drive has makes a difference in both hardware and application compatibility. Firmware in the SSD itself are stable and updated when required by the better manufacturers (some with better results than others), and firmware updates deal with technical matters and bugs that surface after a drive's release, which can be many things, from sleep issues to compatibilities to overheating. Samsung, IMO, does great in this regard. Some people have complained about lack of or poorly done firmware updates from other manufacturers. Even two companies buying the exact same SSDs to rebrand, if they have to supply their own controllers and firmware support one drive can be a winner and the other a doorstop.

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But all this is independent of the OS if they fail on Mac they will most likely fail on Windows and Linux as well... The way a SSD communicates is standardized... That was the point... Of course a SSD is a complex beast and can be implemented good or bad. The differences in price are mainly about speed and wearing. For an external drive connected via USB3/Sata the bottleneck is that connection and not the speed of the SSD. Even the slow ones are faster...
The wearing is not an issue even for heavy audio work of a musician who can only afford 100 bucks... The bigger the better...

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