Black Friday deals have arrived, bringing plenty of delectable SSD and storage sales to choose from.
But not all the discounts are worth your cash. In fact, some are downright bad. That’s where we come in. Our list of SSD and storage deals are the best you can grab, especially given the rising cost for storage in the past year. These drives are not only well-rated and popular, but they’re at or very near all-time low prices, too.
By the way, if you see a bargain you like, don’t wait. The better deals always sell out, and we don’t expect this year to be any different.
Prices on many 2.5-inch SATA SSDs have stayed high throughout the year, relative to 2023. But not these two models from Kingston and Teamgroup—perfect news for anyone seeking to replace a hard-disk drive or expand their storage cheaply.
Need a light amount of reasonably speedy external storage? SK Hynix has slashed prices on its popular portable SSDs to their lowest yet, with options available both for USB-A and USB-C devices. The Tube T31 is particularly nifty in how small it is—almost as compact as a flash drive! You can also pick up more rugged drives that are resistant to dust and water right now: Both the Crucial X9 Pro and Samsung T7 Shield are near all-time lows.
Note: We’ll be avoiding listing deals for the SanDisk Extreme Pro, SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2, and Western Digital MyPassport SSD external drives, due to difficulties in 2023 with spontaneous, unexpected data loss.
Yes! You can save a significant amount of money during Black Friday sales—sometimes hundreds of dollars on a high-capacity drive. The trick is to know what’s a good deal, and what’s not. That’s where we come in: We’ve scoured reputable online retailers, looking for demonstrably good hardware with legitimately solid discounts.
Prices depend on the usual street or retail price of the SSD model—so type of drive, its capacity, and its speed are all factors. Generally, expect to pay about $45 to $50 for a good 1TB SATA or NVMe Gen 3 drive, and $70 to $75 for a 1TB NVMe Gen 4 drive. But the easier guideline is to just look for discounts of at least 20 percent or more, especially if you’re looking for high-capacity hard disk drives.
Nope! Unlike other products, storage vendors don’t produce special models for sale periods like Black Friday/Cyber Monday. These are the same models you’d find on a retail shelf or available on a website throughout the rest of the year.
The best Black Friday deals drop prices on SSDs and HDDs from reliable brands. A good discount starts around 15 to 20 percent—and a great deal will be 30 percent or more. Typically, the bigger bargains are higher-capacity SSDs (4TB or higher).
For the specific brands to watch, stick with known names like Samsung, Crucial, Corsair, SK Hynix, and Western Digital. Kingston, Solidigm, and TeamGroup are also options. The further afield you go, the more likely you’ll end up with underperforming (aka slow) drives.
Pay attention to the model, as well. You can often find multiple drives from a single vendor on sale. The usual sweet spots are discounts on high-performing drives rarely on sale and steep price cuts on budget models.
This is the big question. If you’re on a budget, and have a laptop or a PC that has space for a 2.5-inch drive, a humble SATA SSD will already feel like a lightning-fast upgrade from a spinning-platter (HDD) boot drive. SATA SSDs also exist in the gumstick M.2 form factor, but they’re rarer now that faster NVMe SSDs are more common.
For those trying to decide between NVMe Gen 3 and NVMe Gen 4 drives, you can buy a Gen 3 drive and still get decent speed. However, these days Gen 4 is common enough that you should only opt for a Gen 3 drive if it’s discounted well.
Generally, if you’re building a system or buying for the very long haul, a Gen 4 drive is a good investment. File sizes will only climb over time for game installs, videos, and photos. If you’re in need of absolute blistering speeds for heavy workloads and transfers, then an NVMe Gen 5 drive may be best for you. But that won’t be most people.
Still having trouble deciding? You can check out our guide on choosing an SSD for more details about each type of solid-state drive.
PCWorld tests and reviews new SSDs every month, so if you’re looking to see what we recommend without regard to deal prices, check our rankings of the best SSDs of 2024. But it’s not an either/or situation: Sometimes our top picks go on sale during November!
Check out our roundups for the best PC-related deals in a wide variety of categories!
