I do small business support. Everytime I do a windows install I do a ninite install of a bunch of things. Everything is always in the set. The fucntionality should have been in windows since NTFS was introduced
Is every open source app audited? Look at the XZ near disaster. And XZ is pretty critical software.
Open source doesn't mean it's safe by default, it means that the code can be read.
In my experience the drive fails more often than the adapter, but they do fail. Also, there is a good chance to recover data from a failed drive. With a soldered adaptor it's basically impossible.
The worst part is that the externals are often used for backups.
My first job was in a Big Iron shop in the late 80's, where I was in charge of backups. We kept Three sets of backups, on two different media, one on hand, one in a different location in the main building, in a water and fireproof safe, and one offsite. We had a major failure one day, and had to do a restore.
Both inhouse copies failed to restore. Thankfully the offsite copy worked. We were in panic. That taught me to keep all my important data on three sets.
As the old saying goes: Data loss is not an if question, but a when question. Also, remember that "the cloud" simply means someone else's remote servers over which you have no control.
These things (and Seagate's) have the usb interface soldered on, so if the drivd dies, forget about the data, no way to connect to another usb adapter to try to recover. Granted, it's usually the drive that dies, but in these cases, you have a 100% rate of non recovery . Any other brand's are standard drives. My favorite are toshiba.
That's because in the US you could be sent abroad to kill brown people for oil. I was a conscript in my country in the 80's (Nato). In my country conscripts couldn't be sent abroad, only professionals. I'd be ok with defending home soil. That doen't mean that I wanted to do my tour, but I did it. I think I learnt a lot, not least about serving for the common good. Looking back it was good for me. Also, at hat time, after service you'd be in the reserves (simply listed) and the country could raise an army of millions, who'd only need some refresher training in a week, not like the green ass russian conscripts in Ukraine right now.
I'm favor of conscription for limited duration, and no possibility of deployment abroad. Also, women too. That wasn't a thing then.
Generally you can upgrade RAM of different capacities, but only the amount of RAM that matches the original will run in dual channel. I've done it in a couple of machines, and it worked fine. the extra RAM should take a small performance hit, but In my case the tradeoff was worth it. I've also upgraded RAM beyond the specified max. Hasn't always worked.