Best Hard Drive to give a kid?

RMS Oceanic

I have a Godson, turns 12 in July. I won't be able to celebrate it with him, as in June he moves to Canada permanently. As this has cut short my opportunity to corrupt him with TV shows and movies, I am currently assembling a list of stuff to stick on a hard drive (music and podcasts and stuff like that too) so he can watch them on his laptop. I estimate I'll need at least 1.5TB, so I'm going to play it safe and get a 2TB portable hard drive to give him.

So, questions: What's a good durable hard drive that will be super reliable and hopefully can take a few bumps, and how easy is it to bring a hard drive through an airport? Is that something I should watch out for?

Also also, I was thinking of putting stuff he might not be ready for in a passworded zip file or something and giving him the password when he turns 15 or something. Bad idea?

Enc

Would it not be better to use something like plex so you could add more for him to see over time?

ArbitraryDescriptor

Most "slim" usb drives can take a good drop, because they're pretty light. SSDs are more robust, and could take a good throw, but are more costly. I use a lot of external drives for stuff, but more as an archive, not for regular heavy use, so no recommendation on a brand.

Make sure it's at least USB 3 since at 1.5tb I assume you're dealing with high bitrate files. (And copying 1.5tb over usb 2 sounds like a fun afternoon..)

Stay away from those ultra small thumbdrives. My sandisk 128gb USB 3 overheats in about 30 seconds, because there's nowhere for the heat to even go, and the transfer rate plummets.

mts

also I couldn't tell you how many thumb drives i have lost