Gregory's Server@kytta At that size point, I recommend getting the cheapest name brand that meet your business requirements and making sure your helpdesk has a reasonable stock of spares.
You will lose a substantial number to loss/theft/breakage. Try to use a vendor who you know will provide reasonable warranty service, but the majority will be removed from service due to user conditions rather than failure.
At 512GB you're looking at "USB stick" more than "external hard drive". Consider looking at the drives which have USB-C on one end and USB-A on the other to handle different desktop/laptop hardware.
If you have a supply of branded lanyards, consider issuing them on a lanyard. They're harder to lose and less likely to get mixed up in a pile of random USB sticks.
If you find a supply cheap enough, see if you can treat them like a stationery item and stock them with the pens and staplers.
@PCOWandre yeah that would maybe work for a large number of employees in some big corpo 😂
I work at a small institute in a German town that no one has heard about. We need, like, 10 drives, and all of them may have USB-A as this is what we mostly have here.
But still, thank you for your reply!