Exporting from Premiere Pro to external SSD?

[Ripper7620]

I just started working in PP again, and am completely dumbfounded about exporting to an external SSD. When I first begin a new project I of course set the final destination to an external SSD. What I'm after is exporting the entire project, in sequence, in one piece, to the external SSD. What I end up getting instead are chopped up "previews" of what the final project is supposed to be. If I export to Creative Cloud, to then transfer it from there to the SSD, what I get is a very small file(less than 1Gb for 15min of 4094X2160 4K HD). I've looked for tutorials on YouTube to address this on my own, but none of the videos I've found so far, address my issue. I'm not asking for a detailed in depth explanation of how this is done, but would greatly appreciate being thrown a bone or two, and pointed in the right direction. In the export settings, I set everything to the highest possible quality, with the exception of bit depths like 50-100, since I'm not exporting to social media. Thank you in advance if you're able to point me in the right direction.