A spare SSD, even a small one, can act as a recovery drive ... For a SATA SSD, you'll need to arrange a SATA-to-USB enclosure, and for an NVMe SSD, an M.2 NVMe-to-USB enclosure to connect it ...

If you’re not using an SSD, you should ... picks listed first, SATA picks second) and external SSDs (listed last), with the latter largely being NVMe types in an enclosure on the end of a ...