Crucial - X8 2TB External USB-C 3.2 Gen 2/USB-A Portable SSD - Black

Crucial X8: very fast, sturdy, compact. Great External SSD There are newer X9 and X10 now but not necessarily better.

I bought this after I found out my old external hdd was obsolete, and barely able to transfer the photos that were on it. It was a 2005 IDE 500gb HDD. After getting everything to the computer then copying them over to the new drive I was amazed at how fast it was. The speeds to transfer data are amazing from what I was used to. So far it has been great, and the drive it self feels well built and very solid.

I have been using an old element HDD for years and it served me very well but I decided to try out an external SSD instead so I picked this one up and I could not be happier, my games run so much smoother and the download times and load times have been cut in half if not much more !! Also the size and weight is so much less than the old school HDDs lol.

Great deal on sale. Needed larger 2TB external drive to back-up new 2TB MacBook Pro laptop

I use this portable SSD to do image backups of my laptop while traveling. It is very fast and reliable. I got it during Black Friday at a very good price. It is a very good buy.

Great for gaming. I bought a gaming laptop since I am on the go a lot more than I used to be but the SSD built in was small. Got this and it is excellent for taking a huge library of games on the go with me. I got it on sale and would recommend waiting for sales because it happens frequently enough.

Pros: + Good heat management keeps temps relatively low. + Includes USB C-to-A adapter. Cons: - Write speed absolutely falls off a cliff once cache is full. (BTW: You don't need to take my word for this, it has been confirmed in professional technical reviews by sites such as Tom's Hardware.) If you do large transfers over 280GB expect its write speed to plummet down to ~50MBps. That was the average I repeatedly observed (after the 280GB write cache was exhausted) over the entire business day it took to backup another 2TB SSD to this one. This sort of task is a one-time affair and subsequent incremental syncs would be smaller thus probably not an issue if you can wait out the initial backup. But if you regularly transfer large amounts to this drive (e.g. video production, professional photographers, etc) this is definitely not the drive to pick. You can read the aforementioned review for much better options in these type scenarios. - Included cable is pathetically short. Guess what Crucial... 6 inches isn't enough to plug into the USB port of a typical desktop PC and then be able to sit the SSD on your desk. The cable is so short the drive would just dangle in mid-air = not good. What would it cost you (a few extra pennies in the huge volumes you do) to include a 12 inch cable?!?! - No activity light. Maybe not a big deal for some but when doing something like a huge transfer, which will take hours, it would be helpful to have a little LED to glance at and see if it's finished. Again, something that could have been included for mere pennies.

Got 3 of these around Black Friday. So far so good. Got these as an additional back up to store media. Not a prepper, but do prefer to own my media vs pay monthly fees to stream or pay rent to watch something once digitally. And with constant rotation on streaming. I never know when a show or movie may come or go. Its just easier to own the media and store a few copies on various drive for easy anytime playback. Also great when power goes out. These power right of usb and are easily stored in laptop/tablet bags. Wish i bought more.