Build your own external SSD. Way cheaper, and you'll end up with a higher quality disk and enclosure.
If you're budget conscious then just hang out in r/buildapcsales and look for people posting deals on SSDs. When someone posts a deal for a SSD then a bot called (creatively) SSDBot will post a little summary of the specs of the drive in question, and usually there will be a good discussion of the merits of the drive, and any preferred alternatives.
You want what SSDBot calls a 'performance' or 'prosumer' SSD WITH DRAM. Generally speaking I like the Samsung EVOs for external disks, but you can find cheaper disks that are comparable.
I wouldn't bother with anything other than SATA drives, because the USB interface will be your bottleneck.
I use this enclosure often and it's perfect and forward compatible should you decide to upgrade to a machine with Thunderbolt at some point.
Or if you simply can't be bothered just go get one of the Samsung T7 external drives. Pretty much the same thing but like $100 more.
I assembled my 2TB external drives for about what the 1TB T7 retails for.
What kind of external drive/enclosure are you using? I had the same problem until I switched enclosures on my SSD from a USB 3.0/5Gbps one to a USB-C/10GBps one. Since then, even performance mode works like a charm.
Here's what I ordered: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CQD6M5B/
Would this do the job: Cable Matters Premium Aluminum 10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD with USB-C and USB-A Cables - Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 Port Compatible with MacBook Pro, MacBook Air https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQD6M5B/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_07Q41JHP59CHGJPPD774
I probably should have mentioned that this issue is happening with any video played on the SSD. I will attempt to copy it to my main drive so I don't screw up the sync and play from there to see if the issue persists.
Any recommendations on an enclosure? I don't seem to be having much good luck picking the right enclosure as the two I tried had weird issues I didn't know how to fix. I then posted elsewhere (can't remember if Reddit or Discord) asking for a recommendation and the only answer I got was that I didn't need an enclosure, just the adapter.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CQD6M5B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Run Bootcamp from a decent external SSD. Apple charges way too much for SSD space to waste any of the internal SSD on a Windows installation.
Get yourself a decent USBC or Thunderbolt drive enclosure - something like this then hang out in r/buildapcsales until someone posts a deal for a SSD.
In the comments for that post will be a good place to get more information, but basically you want something that SSDBot calls a 'performance SSD' and you want one that has DRAM. I tend to prefer Samsung SSDs, and you can get a good deal if you are patient.
If you assemble one yourself from a good SSD on sale rather than just buying something like a Samsung T7 you can probably save enough money to afford another TB or two.
The 'best' thing you could buy is a good USBC or thunderbolt NVME enclosure, then put your own drive in it. It will be about 95-98% as fast as an internal drive.
That would probably be overkill for what you describe though. Probably any decent enclosure (like this) with a decent SSD in it would be plenty. Hang out in r/buildapcsales and when someone posts a deal for a SATA SSD there will be plenty of discussion about the merits of the particular drive in question. Finding a good performance drive with DRAM would be my advice for best performance.
The Samsung T series are fine, but generally a bit expensive since they know that most of the people who buy them are content creators used to paying premium prices for camera accessories and whatnot. You can save money if you assemble your own. Like 50-100$ in some cases.
I used the enclosure I linked above with a Samsung 860 EVO 2TB and ended up paying about what they were asking for the 1TB T7. I use it for bootcamp and it runs modern games like Cyberpunk perfectly fine.
The HDD setup is good, but the USB-C enclosure won’t work with that SSD - the SSD is 2.5in, so you’d need a 2.5in SSD enclosure, not an m.2 SSD enclosure - I’ll edit this in a moment with the one I’d recommend -
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQD6M5B/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_KkdkFbY291V7S
Other than that, I like the 860 drives, and the HDD setup looks great, good luck!
I have an external hard drive mostly to store movies, a backup of my music library, and some misc. files/docs. Generally, things that I know I won’t need all the time/on the go. It’s not really great if you’re not gonna have a desk to set the drive down on.
If you want save a little money, get the enclosure and ssd separately. I think it tends to be more worth it at the higher storages ( 1tb+). It’s plug and play, just need to format the hard drive the first time.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQD6M5B/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_026dFb69NB867
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CQD6M5B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I just got this one with the exact same drive (870 EVO 4TB). I almost went with the Sarbent enclosure, but after reading some reviews saying the case is hard to open and feels flimsy - I decided to look elsewhere.
For the Cable Matters enclosure, there's two USB cables to use with both kinds of USB ports. It's made of aluminum and has holes on one side, so the heat will dissipate a bit better (can't ever go wrong with more protection against heat). And lastly, I thought it looked nicer, was well-made, and had better reviews.
I haven't had any problems at all with my external drives. I use one for photos and one for Boot Camp. Updated to Big Sur on day 1. Never had a problem. But I assembled my own external drives rather than buying one off the shelf.
I use this enclosure and I hung out in r/buildapcsales until someone posted a good deal on a drive. On every SSD post there's a bot (SSDBot) that will post info about the specific drive in question. You probably want want SSDBot calls a 'Performance' or 'Prosumer' drive WITH DRAM for best performance.
Example - https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/comments/ov2t0u/ssdsata_wd_blue_3d_nand_1tb_internal_ssd_sata_iii/ (may be a dead deal but just to illustrate)
You can also get a M.2 enclosure and drive for even better performance (within like 2-3% of the speed of the internal Apple SSD) but those tend to be more expensive. Sometimes like 20-30% for the same storage space. Though regularly dealing with massive amounts of data is actually one of the few use cases that might benefit from M.2.
When I got mine I was able to assemble a 2TB drive for the price of one of the 1TB Samsung T5.
I am just getting started - I have a few laptops with Intel SSD's (external - in old basic USB cases, upgrading to thesesoon which I expect to be much faster via USB-C) and setup a RP w/ 14TB hdd and made an NFS share. Unfortunately Windows 10 Home lacks NFS client support, so I am shuffling things around manually. I haven't tried running Chia on the RP yet, it would probably be faster than my slowest/oldest laptop if it can do 1 k-32 per day.
I did the same thing and ordered this enclosure. It seems to work well.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CQD6M5B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Try searching for usb enclosure 10gbps https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Aluminum-External-Enclosure/dp/B07CQD6M5B/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=usb+enclosure+10gbps&qid=1604028134&sr=8-4
But to be honest j would get an NVMe drive, they are only a little bit more but will transfer faster to the internal SSD.
Might want to consider purchasing an enclosure that supports USB 3.1 speeds (like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQD6M5B/)
Try amazon smile to donate to a charity of your choice automatically at no cost to you!
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07CQD6M5B/
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I bought this enclosure to make a bootable external SSD till it was time to upgrade. if you have any thoughts.
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Booting from this external enclosure ssd
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CQD6M5B/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
then going to convert the thunderbolt 3 down to thunderbolt 2 with the apple adapter