Two external drives corrupted while using LRC

Hello, new to posting here.  Wondering if anyone else is having issues with external drives becoming corrupt while using LRC? Wondering how to prevent it from happening again (and losing hours and hours of work ....again.....)

In Jan 2025 purchased new laptop HP Spectre x360 and WD external hard drive with the primary purpose being able to use external hard drive to access lightroom catalogue from both my laptop and Dell desktop. Both HP Spectre and WD had positive reviews in adobe community chats. Initially worked well then WD external drive became corrupted, and all data lost (this happened after using Lightroom classic and photo shop). WD drive was sent out to professionals who were unable to recover data. Through Adobe support I was able to recover some work through a (not very current) lightroom catalogue back up on my desk top hard drive.  Purchased new Seagate external drive and with help from Adobe support was able to get ‘up and running’ again.  Was working well until two days ago LRC froze, and I had to turn computer off to get out of it. I was using Lightroom classic and some photoshop – ie accessing photo shop through lightroom. Was using photoshop for the AI remove distractions feature.  Everything seemed to be working afterwards (ie after turnign computer off then back on) but then yesterday am  my laptop wouldn’t boot up (external drive was still plugged in from previous day) and external drive was very hot and making noise.  Unplugged external drive and laptop seemed to boot up/be functioning normally – however drive now not recognized by laptop or desktop. Contacted Seagate support and am sending drive to them for attempted recovery. (as an aside, Seagate support MUCH more helpful than Western Digital)

I have a (fairly recent) back up of my lrcat on onedrive – but am worried same thing will happen again if I transfer to another external drive. Dont really want to corrupt another external drive. Looking for any insight as to why this could be happening? Seagate support said corrupted files could mess up external drive? ie could this be an Adobe glitch? HP support said it could be external drive is not compatible with laptop (suggested using HP brand external drives) but Seagate said their external drives should be compatible to use with the HP laptop. Is this an issue other users have had? As stated above, looking for any advice on how to prevent this from happening again... Thanks!