The choice depends upon what you want it for, what the intended use is.
If you want to frequently transport the drive, you might want to buy a portable SSD drive such as those in the WD My Passport line. I've used many My Passport drives over many years and found them to be reliable and solid.
You could also consider buying an external drive enclosure and installing a raw SSD drive yourself. That would give you the flexibility to install the drive inside that laptop or another laptop in future. If you're looking for SATA, Crucial's MX500 series are high-quality and excellent performance. Their performance may be a little less than the top performers, but at a much lower price.
If you intend to run Windows from an external SSD, it's best to clean install Windows to that external SSD. You'll need to use different commands in diskpart depending upon whether you want to use legacy boot or UEFI. (If it's for the XPS L502x, it would be legacy boot.) If the drive is just for storage, then these steps are unnecessary.
To get the best performance, connect the external drive to a USB 3 port (on left side and rear of your L502x), not the USB 2 port (on right side of your L502x).
P.S. I have the same laptop. The XPS L502x is 2nd-generation Intel Core, not 4th-generation.
filbert
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September 27th, 2022 08:00
The choice depends upon what you want it for, what the intended use is.
If you want to frequently transport the drive, you might want to buy a portable SSD drive such as those in the WD My Passport line. I've used many My Passport drives over many years and found them to be reliable and solid.
You could also consider buying an external drive enclosure and installing a raw SSD drive yourself. That would give you the flexibility to install the drive inside that laptop or another laptop in future. If you're looking for SATA, Crucial's MX500 series are high-quality and excellent performance. Their performance may be a little less than the top performers, but at a much lower price.
If you intend to run Windows from an external SSD, it's best to clean install Windows to that external SSD. You'll need to use different commands in diskpart depending upon whether you want to use legacy boot or UEFI. (If it's for the XPS L502x, it would be legacy boot.) If the drive is just for storage, then these steps are unnecessary.
To get the best performance, connect the external drive to a USB 3 port (on left side and rear of your L502x), not the USB 2 port (on right side of your L502x).
P.S. I have the same laptop. The XPS L502x is 2nd-generation Intel Core, not 4th-generation.