I have about 100gb and growing that is critical for my business. File size growth is slow, so it will be years and years before it even gets to 200gb.
I have multiple local copies and a copy in google drive, but I want to leave a hard drive at my mother-in-law’s house.
I only want 2.5 form factor or smaller as my mother-in-law will be carrying it here when she comes to visit us on the city.
I’m not sure what the recommendation is. I’m not a millionaire, I’m just freelance. So, I’d like to minimize cost.
Regarding fakes, there are tools you can (and should) run on any new drive. I personally like h2testw, but there are others as well.
You should also avoid sketchy resellers. This includes Amazon, due to their policy of commingling and their response to counterfeits. Don’t buy from Amazon! Stick to trustworthy and first-party sellers. If buying online, make sure they don’t have a third party seller. In fact, probably best to skip any that even have a 3rd party “marketplace” system.
Validrive is a new tool that’s quite good at detecting fakes.
I don’t think there are really any fake 256 GB drives on the market. The real drives are priced low enough that there’s really not much profit to be made from selling fakes. It’s just not that much cheaper to make a 32 GB drive and flash fake firmware than to actually make a legitimate 256 GB drive. Or buy the AmazonBasics brand since only Amazon makes and sells them.