I had two Maxtor external USB drives that performed flawlessly in backup service for several years. They didn't run continuously, I used them to store compressed backup of the two internal Seagate Barracuda SATA drives monthly and once when I had to do a complete restore of C that holds the operating system and apps. They were powered off otherwise, viruses and malware have a bad habit of migrating across drives. Presently I use a 4TB Seagate Barracuda SATA HDD for that service now that my desktop has a bay for a removable drive. I never noticed Seagate Barracuda drives being heat sensitive, I've used them for years in well ventilated cases, in this one the 1TB C and 4TB D sit behind the intake fan and the air from the exhaust fan is cool. All that having been said, if the weak link is the USB to SATA hardware, eliminate it if you can. If there is room in the case for an external drive bay install one, if not you may think about moving everything to a bigger case.