I was confused among the following choices:
1.
Samsung 980/
970 Evo Plus 1TB AND an
USB C enclosure: $150: Good external device that will serve better in the future than now because my current motherboard and ports cannot make use of its full capabilities. Even in future, it is more likely to be used as an external device only, given how technology is evolving and newer products will be much faster than those available today.
2.
Seagate Firecuda 120 2TB: $270: Excellent internal upgrade, but for current use only. Also expensive. In the future, this device will only be used as an external device and there are much better NVMe drives that are significantly faster for the same price.
3.
Samsung 870 Evo 2TB: $240: Same reasons as for
Seagate Firecuda 120 2TB.
4.
Samsung T5/
T7/
SanDisk Extreme Portable 2TB: $215 to $250: Great external disks but using option 1 with 2TB capacity would be better because they are faster at similar price points.
5.
Crucial MX500/
Samsung EVO 870/
Samsung QVO 870 1TB: $100 to $120: Good internal upgrade, but for current use only. In the future, this device will only be used as an external device and there are much better NVMe drives that are significantly faster for the same price.
However,
given the modest price, and the fact that it will serve now really well when the future is distant and unpredictable, this was the best/ most optimal choice that is a perfect balance between current and future requirements, as well as price.
I chose Crucial over Samsung for the following reasons:
1.
Crucial MX500 uses TLC while
Samsung QVO 870 uses QLC. Also, I think the QVO is best suited only for sizes 2TB and above because the DRAM (2 GB) and SLC cache (78 GB) are adequate for most use only at higher sizes.
2.
Crucial MX500 is currently cheaper than
Samsung QVO 870.
3.
Crucial MX500 is also currently 30% cheaper than
Samsung EVO 870 or
Seagate Firecuda 120 (all of which use TLC), hence I chose this over the other two. If the prices were same, I would have preferred the Firecuda (for maximum endurance) or 870 EVO.
I know some of you may see this as an easy decision made unnecessarily complicated, but I guess everyone comes across such situations.
In this case, I wanted to make a future-proof purchase, but given that my current laptop limited me to conventional SATA disks which are becoming increasingly obsolete, buying a high capacity SATA storage made little sense. It boiled down to
choosing between a low capacity storage that can be most useful now or a high capacity one that will potentially be more useful in the future. Since the future is distant and unpredictable, it made more sense to meet current requirements optimally than invest heavily in a future requirement which is more likely to be a bad decision since technology is constantly evolving and improving, making current purchases increasingly obsolete in the future.
I have put out the details just so someone in a similar situation may find it useful to make a decision.
