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Eddie in Tulsa, OK asked: “Why aren’t there any solid state external drives?”
Eddie, external SSDs are not that common, that’s because up until now HDDs had been considerably cheaper than SSDs. That’s starting to change and SSDs are becoming more and more affordable.
Most people also use external drives to store files.
There is another issue though. SSDs are fast and a lot of the connections that people use to connect external hard drives are not. SSDs are much, much faster than USB 2.0 ports, but you could argue that’s old technology anyway, the thing is: they’re also faster than USB 3.0. Thunderbolt makes better use of them but Thunderbolt drives are expensive.
Most people also use external drives to store files. Once a file is open they forget about it. Few people are running games or operating systems from external drives where SSD would shine, if the bus speeds were fast enough to match the drive’s speed.
Eddie, there are external SSDs, they’re just not very common because they cost more and don’t perform that much better for what most people use them for.