I was a long time samsung–wd user, recently just out of curiosity bought a 10tb external seagate drive.

performance is great, not loud but its 60°C idle… the plastic enclosure is terrible at dissipating heat and shucking it voids the warranty so that’s that. Never had an external drive this size so i cant say its not normal for these, but all my internal drives even in external docks are chilling at 30-35 °C …

tldr: if you buy, don’t buy external