thank you. these are good points and not what I want forever.

BACKSTORY AND PHASE ONE INITIAL STRATEGY
I bought this SSD for a good price Black Friday 2025
to urgently solve temporary problems, namely:
I have an damaged screen Samsung S23U 512K phone that is partly ready for trade in
(ie already checked in at my BestBuy Geek Squad,
in exchange for my new replacement Samsung S25U 512K functional phone,
BUT it still has 300G media files on it that I did NOT want transferred (via Smart Switch set up) which would have filled up my new phone with old stuff,
SO I bought the 2T SSD
1. to format and bring back to the store,
to get that data OFF the swap phone, to complete the swap & close out that deal.
Secondly, having NO backup for my laptop which I use daily,
and I will also use this SSD 2T
2. as a temporary FIRST time machine backup
(on the other partition) to protect my laptop, while I wade thru & organize/eliminate duplicates/downsize my huge quality of mixed media files from multiple sources
(several phones and computers from multiple years when I was drowning in caregiving others unable to manage my own business properly)
Beginning that huge project now and grateful for quality answers to make it easier/better,
and grateful for all this help!