Buying more disk space rarely feels like a luxury purchase but it's a necessary part of computing these days. Whether you're expanding your internal hard drive, buying an external drive for backup or transportation of files, or setting up a network storage system.
While prices per MB (or TB) are regularly falling, the space you need to cope with the ever-growing files sizes seems to keep the average spend around the same. I remember buying a 1TB drive a few years ago (or maybe 10) and thinking that was all the storage I'd ever need. Now I'm wondering if 4TB is really enough or if I should go for 6TB or 10TB.
Console gamers are facing the same dilemma, so games are more regularly downloaded than bought on disk. And even those that are still on disk need space on your console for them to be played. Suddenly even that 1TB console drive is bursting with content and you need to invest in an external drive to free up some room.
That's why even though the deals don't seem very exciting, Amazon's current Black Friday hard drive deals are my favorite this year. Right now there is up to 47% off a range of drives from SanDisk, Western Digital, Seagate, Synology and more.
For next-gen console users, the WD_Black 5TB game drive is an excellent option, with a SuperSpeed 5Gbps interface to provide the transfer speeds needed by the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. What's even better is that right now it's $50 off at just $99.99.
Those looking for a portable drive for their files should look at the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD. These are great-looking solid-state drives, perfect for transporting large video, photo or audio files. There's also a huge discount on them right now. The 2TB is 47% off, taking the price down to just $269.99.
If you're looking to create or upgrade a home network storage system, there are some great deals to be had on Western Digital Red Pro 3.5in HDDs. These 7200rpm drives are designed for NAS drives and use Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) which is preferable for the large amount of data transfer that a NAS requires. The 4TB version is currently 39% off, bring the price down to $119.99.
Another option is Seagate's Ironwolf drives, which are also CMR drives designed for NAS use and currently 19% off the 4TB model, bringing the price down to $89.99. And if you are looking to build your first NAS system, you can save 20% on the Synology 2 Bay NAS Diskstation right now, which comes diskless so you can install the drives that work for you (up to 16TB per bay).
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