My 6TB G-Tech HDD Died—Is It Time to Move to an External SSD?

Question

I’ve used Adobe Lightroom for years and have always relied on three 6TB external HDDs (made by G-Tech) to store my photos and Lightroom catalogs. One 6TB external drive serves as my primary drive, holding my images and catalog backups, while a second 6TB drive is a full clone created with Carbon Copy Cloner. I also use Backblaze for cloud backup of my external drives’ photos and catalogs to be as thoroughly secure as possible.

Just the other day, my primary HDD external drive became “toast” due to what appears to be a firmware failure—even after assistance and confirmation from Apple technicians. (I suspected that the new macOS 26.2 update may have triggered the issue, but that’s another story.) Unfortunately, there was no Apple solution.

Now I need to purchase a new 6TB external drive as a replacement. Should I move to a 6TB external SSD instead of another HDD, and if so, which models have worked best for you? I’m currently using a Mac Studio with a 1TB internal SSD, which—among other things—holds my Lightroom catalog.

dj_paige · Accepted Answer

Any HDD or SSD from a reputable manufacturer will work well. When it comes to storing photos, there is little benefit to having faster disks such as SSD, although if you are going to put the catalog files on external disks, then faster disks are better. (And depending on what other programs you might run, a fast SSD disk may be necessary)

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