GordonPrimero wrote:
Image storage, I have a lot of photo images many 220mb or higher on my iMac and as it's 2011 i don't want to lose them. I've heard some tales that the HDD, as it's mechanical sometimes gives up the ghost and you lose the data?
You should absolutely make backups of all those files on separate drives. A 2011 iMac is 13 years old, most computers tend to need to be replaced much sooner than that due to hardware failure. All such drives, mechanical or solid state, do and will eventually fail, it's a matter of when, not if. You have beaten the odds with your 13-year old Mac but some day, it will fail to start up or the drive will fail. So be ready for that with backup copies.
Your 2011 iMac is limited to USB 2 speed, 480 Mbps. That is equal to about 60 MB/s. But in practice, with the read/write direct copying, you might be lucky to achieve half that speed, e.g. 30 MB/s. The Seagate external HDD portable is probably able to read/write at about 100-200 MB/s, but with your older USB 2 ports, you will only see about 30 MB/s. As for the SanDisk 1TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD - Up to 2000MB/s, that is a top of the line drive, capable of 2000 MB/s ... but your computer is limited to ~ 30 MB/s, which is just ~ 1% of that.
Also, some SSDs may require more bus power than your older iMac can provide. So I would suggest you stay with external HDDs to make copies of your files. If you end up with an external drive that requires more bus power than your Mac provides, you may have to also buy an externally powered hub, perhaps another $100 or so.
