Best external hard drive for my iMac 2020

You mentioned photographs. SSDs are not for archival of information.

This is controversial around these parts, but I recommend you get your photos out of the Apple ecosystem and store them as one photo per file on multiple external storage devices. For long term storage, don't rely on usb memory sticks nor external ssd drives.  LoC does not have data on the reliability of usb memory sticks.  Apple says do not store photos and videos on external ssd media.  One device should be off site.  Using a cloud service is fine.  Remember a lot of cloud services are sync services.  That is should the file be deleted on the local device, the photo will be deleted in the cloud.  For this reason,  I never install the cloud service software on my computer.  I use only file upload.  For those who complain, my assessment is that the apple Eco-system doesn't match Library of Congress's requirements for digital archiving.

informative video:

Archiving Digital Photos - Multimedia - Digital Preservation (Library of Congress)

printed version

Digital Photos - Personal Archiving | Digital Preservation - Library of Congress

General information on digital preservation:

Personal Digital Archiving | Digital Preservation - Library of Congress

You can store your library on an external storage device such as a USB Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled). At one time Apple didn't recommend storing iMovie libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives.

FWIW, if you are only using the external for backups, then a regular 7200 rpm spinning drive is fine. Speed is not the most important thing with Time Machine as it will run in the background and is a lot less expensive than an SSD. Having said that, an SSD is obviously preferred if speed matters such as a boot drive or a scratch disk for things like Final Cut Pro. And, SSDs will fail without warning (when they do)- a spinning drive will usually show some odd behavior as a warning before failing.

Excellent candidates for an external SSD are these drives from OWC (MacSales.com):

Envoy Pro EX with USB-C or USB 3- best from a speed vs price standpoint

OWC Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3 - fastest if you have a Thunderbolt 3 port but more expensive

I have a Samsung T5 1TB SSD drive with my iMac 27". It's fast enough with USB 3.0 connection and it's so small you won't even notice it's there.

Hi there,

A great choice is the OWC Mercury Elite Pro: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ME3NH7T04/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=shoppingengine&utm_campaign=googlebase&gclid=CjwKCAjw9MuCBhBUEiwAbDZ-7jFf9iw7k7oMwKJaN_Dz0JvE258gAmaJX0aJK7gUP35NaVlPgqn93xoCFBoQAvD_BwE. It is frequently recommended here on Apple Support Communities. 

Cheers,

Jack

snr146 Said:

"Best external hard drive for my iMac 2020: Need external hard drive for pictures, documents mostly. Is the LaCie 1TB or 2TB Hard Drive USB 3.0 a good option?"

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Based on Personal Experience:

A. Which to Consider:

I use a portable SSD (Solid State Drive). SSDs have no moving parts, and is therefore less prone to failure. It is 1.5 times the storage of my internal drive.

B. Avoiding Failure:

All hard drives may fail, so consider getting a Protection Plan of sorts for it. Elsewise it could cost you thousands of dollars just to recover the data.

If you want SSD;

Most cost effective from OWC: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-pro-elektron

Best performance: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-pro-fx

Again, OWC is the most recommend brand here on Apple Support Communities.

Cheers,

Jack

snr146 Said:

"Best external hard drive for my iMac 2020: Thank you SSD it will be - that was another question I had but forgot to include; thanks so much for responding."

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You are welcome.