Recommendations for external SSDs used for gaming/game storage

Recently my 2TB Seagate external HDD decided to stop working on me (again!) and I've decided to call it quits. I've been using these drives for about 5 years now mainly for gaming and games storage and they work well, but they are SO delicate! The first time it broke was when it was in my backpack and the bag took a tumble off my suitcase while I was traveling. Sad, but understandable.

But this time I was playing Starfield, the game crashed and locked up my whole computer, and upon manually restarting it, the drive had basically stopped working. I tried scanning and repairing it to no avail (no errors detected). Weirdly, it still sometimes works, but I can't deal with the unreliability and delicateness. Also, I'm wondering if running the game from the external HD had something to do with the issues caused when it crashed.

Anyway, this long-winded story is all just to ask: do you have any recommendations for good external drives (preferably SSD but HDD will work if they're reliable and quick) that aren't so finnicky? For context, this will not always be sitting at my desk (I do take my laptop traveling sometimes and usually bring the external drive to game), so I want something at least marginally durable as well (or tips/products for protecting it). I've been looking at the Crucial X9 Pro 2TB Portable External SSD, but wanted to see if people had other recs.