Apart from having more storage capacity, why not just get a complete portable one that uses 5V and doesn’t requires you to power it with a plug? What advances does a big 12V external hard drive have against a smaller fully portable 5V HDD?
I have a Seagate One Touch 5TB and it’s great but I want another one probably with more storage but from what I’ve seen only Seagate’s Expansion Desktop drives offer more storage than 5TB.
Well USB can only power a small mostly 2.5inch external drive and cannot really spin most large 3.5 inch drives.
And once you want larger sizes or more reliable enterprise drives which are in most large external usb drives you need power. If you are happy with a smaller ( and most likely less reliable ) 2.5 inch drive usb only is of course more convenient.
Actually USB-C could power it. Or at least some ports could. But USB-C is a clusterfuck hence…