The Best Early Black Friday External Hard Drive and SSD Deals
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1970-01-01 08:00
When was the last time you backed up your hard drive? If it’s been more

When was the last time you backed up your hard drive? If it’s been more than a few months – or, more likely, your answer was “hm, I don’t know” – it’s probably time to consider getting an external hard drive to keep your data safe.

If you were to lose every photo, video, and document on your home or work computer, that’d be pretty costly, right? Not just in money, but in time spent recovering and even memories lost? Let’s avoid that. We’ve found some great deals on hard drives – both HDD and SSD.

The Best Storage Deals for September 2023

*Deals are selected by our commerce team

Even if you’re fully backed up on the cloud, errors occur, services can get hacked, and mistakes can be made. A local backup is always a good option to have, and if you can spend under $100 to keep everything safe, isn’t that worth it? Massive amounts of storage – we’re talking terabytes – are cheaper than they’ve ever been, so stop settling for lo-res photo uploads to that automatic cloud account and save all your memories in full detail with a new drive.

SSD Deals

An external SSD is easy to use: Plug it into your device with a USB or Thunderbolt connection and you can instantly have terabytes upon terabytes of storage and backup options. The simplicity and speed of these drives, however, will cost you.

SSDs (solid-state drives) differentiate themselves largely based on their speed: They make almost everything quicker, from starting apps to copying files to pulling up those files in a flash. Another benefit: Thanks to a lack of moving internal parts, these drives are less prone to failure. The downside? Because SSD technology is much newer and chip prices are ever-increasing, you might be paying up to 10x more per TB for the speed and reliability over an HDD.

*Deals are selected by our commerce team

The benefits of an internal SSD drive are the same as the external: They’re fast, they use less power, have no moving parts, and they’re whisper-quiet. The downsides are the same: For those benefits, you’ll be paying a lot more per TB of storage. That said, prices on internal SSDs seem to be more accessible than the external devices, so adding a terabyte or two is more achievable for a little extra effort.

Internal SSDs come in two types: the M.2 style or the 2.5-inch drives that slot into your desktop. As long as you’re going to be opening up your device to install these, you should get the most storage you can at once, so spend a few extra bucks to add at least 1TB. Most users will find that to be plenty of space for photos, videos, and music. If you’re a power content creator or a gamer, you’re probably looking in the 2TB-8TB area for your usage.

Our SSD Picks

(Credit: Amazon)

SanDisk 2TB Extreme USB-C Portable External SSD

The SanDisk Extreme is aptly named due to its hardy build. Dust resistant, water resistant, and drop resistant up to 2 meters, this portable SSD has read speeds of up to 1050MB/s and 1000MB/s write speeds. It comes in capacities of up to 4TB and includes password protection featuring 256-bit AES encryption, ensuring that no matter the amount of files you have on board, they’ll be properly safeguarded.

(Credit: Best Buy)

WD Black SN850 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD with Heatsink

The WD Black SN850 has read speeds of up to 7000MB/s for its 1TB and larger storage sizes. You'll pay marginally less if you don't get it with a heatsink built in, but considering the separate cost of heatsinks, you might as well get them together. Perhaps most importantly, this SSD is PCle Gen 4, meaning it's compatible with the PS5. Just slide off the top cover and snap this bad boy in place, and you'll be shocked by how quickly it blazes through load screens.

If the 1TB or 2TB (which goes out of stock fairly quickly) aren’t within your budget, there's also the 500GB size, which will work just fine for anyone who doesn't hoard games like some sort of digital dragon. It reads slower at 5300MBs/s, but that's still pretty quick.

HDD Deals

If you’re looking for a quick and simple storage solution, an external drive is your best choice to quickly back up your data. External drives plug into your machine via a USB or Thunderbolt connection and don’t require any technical know-how for installation. The main questions you have to answer are how much storage you need, how quick you need it to transfer, how durable you need your drive to be, and how much you want to spend.

*Deals are selected by our commerce team

When looking at an external HDD (hard disk drive), you’ll find that these are generally cheaper than SSDs, but this comes at a trade-off of speed and durability. Thanks to the moving parts and spinning discs of an HDD, they're more likely to fail over time. Transfer rates are also slower than SSDs. That said, the amount of storage available is roughly the same as an SSD, so if you need a lower-priced, short-term option that is good for transferring data between two devices, an HDD is a good fit.

If you’re comfortable opening up your desktop computer tower and making a few connections, an internal HDD can add extra storage and backup space. Yes, it’s a bit more intensive than plugging in a box to your USB port, but it's a long-term solution that doesn’t add clutter.

Our HDD Picks

(Credit: Amazon)

WD Elements 5TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive

The WD Elements external HDD comes in a variety of sizes from 1TB to 5TB and is an extremely affordable storage solution. It is compatible with PC, Mac, PS4, and Xbox and has both USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. It measures a diminutive 4.35 inches long and 3.23 inches wide and won't take up much room on your desk, TV stand, or travel bag.

Seagate IronWolf 8TB NAS 3.5-Inch Internal HDD

(Credit: Amazon)

Seagate has long produced reliable and affordable HDDs, and its IronWolf series comes in sizes from 1TB to a whopping 18TB, so whether you're looking for a small bump in capacity or producing your own content, they've got you covered. This NAS-optimized hard drive provides a data transfer rate of 6GB/s with 7200 RPM and includes a five-year limited product warranty protection plan.

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