Somewhat recently I bought Lacie Rugged thunderbolt2 drives. They came with an attached thunderbolt2 cable, and a USB3-Micro port with USB3 cable.
The USB3 is backward compatible with USB2, though it's noticeably slower. I use thunderbolt where possible. Getting one of these with an SSD is recommended.
One of them I bought cheaply "new open box" on eBay, removed the 1TB HDD, and installed a 512GB SSD I had removed from a prior upgrade. Love that. Big, fast, cheap.
Then I got an Open USB3 enclosure ($32?) to put my then dead 2012 macbook's 1TB SSD in. It came with a Thunderbolt 3 cable as well as a cable to USB3. Again, blazing fast, cheap, and big.
For more speed, first you want SSD all around. Then go with something that will do Thunderbolt3 and USB3 for external.
Here's the Oyen I got:
https://www.amazon.com/MiniPro-USB-C-External-Aluminum-Enclosure/dp/B01N52Z26D
