Are Western Digital drives trustworthy these days. If I want to buy a pretty big non-flash hard drive for "backup and throw in a drawer" purposes, is this a good choice
https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Portable-External-Drive-WDBU6Y0050BBK-WESN/dp/B07X41PWTY
If you get the Western Digital "Red" product line of drives, which are officially blessed and branded for NAS use, they're very good and very stable.
I have found over time that across several manufacturers it's worth buying hard drives labeled for NAS use, because they seem to be built and tested to higher standards, so I now use them for backups as well.
Now I see you're thinking about those portable drive-in-a-box things, I would not trust any brand of those. I've seen too many, of many different brands, abruptly die on people.
My wife has a WD Passport from & for her job, and that's been doing OK but I still wouldn't trust it.
On my desktop computer I use one of the USB-3 to SATA adapter thingies that you can plug any SATA drive into and have it show up.
If you want to carry it around, then ya, you have to figure out an enclosure.
mcc
Clifton Royston
Tristan