External hard drives vs USB for backup storage

[Jahzara]

Is there any benefit to using an external hard drive vs a USB for saving backup data?

I get that an external has more physical heft and weight to it, so it's more durable against physical damage compared to a more fragile USB drive.

But if I am not concerned about that, is there any real benefit to paying a higher price tag for an external disk or SSD drive over flash USB?

 

[pete.i]

I think I would take issue with saying that a USB flash drive is more fragile than an external HDD although with an SSD drive there is practically no difference in durability.

I use SSD drives in a carrier for my backups. When I was backing a lot of stuff I was using a 4 disk NAS but now I only a 2 Tb disk and when that gets full I buy another.

 

[Ste]

Only other thing I can think of is that a full /large external drive or old-fashioned enclosure is harder to lose than a USB drive or micro drive.

or, not as easy to accidently throw in the cloths washer. Even though every single time I have done that to a USB drive they still work perfectly fine, and a few dryer cycles too!