If you want it to have full TRIM and SMART support, it’ll need to have an NVMe interface and a Thunderbolt connection.
USB
There’s a big difference between the storage that’s available, and what’s advisable. Whether it’s affordable is another question.
What’s our purpose? What factors confound the results of tests, and how to eliminate them? Which tests? What should we believe, and where do we go from here?
Fundamentally a combination of PCI Express and DisplayPort, with substantial power supply, there are several reasons why you won’t get the whole 40 Gb/s from external storage.
Armed with just a couple of flashy Thunderbolt NVMe SSDs and his home-made benchmarking app, we discover whether Thunderbolt is any better than USB 3.x.
Internal or external? Hard disk or SSD? USB or Thunderbolt? Cooled or compact? Branded or separates? An external boot disk? Do you have a return and refund option?
M1 Macs don’t support SMART monitoring over USB-C, forcing us to choose between Full Security without SMART, or Reduced Security with SMART support.
Apple wants us to run our Macs at Full Security and not use third-party kernel extensions, but refuses to build S.M.A.R.T. access into USB in macOS.
How to install macOS on your M1 Mac’s external SSD. But it comes with a snag: you can only install 11.2 and can’t update it to 11.2.1.
Even with 4 ports on my Mac, I’m running out. What about putting a couple of my 1 TB SSDs into a single enclosure? Here’s a cost-effective answer.
The Eclectic Light Company 