
Black Friday is an excellent opportunity to bag a bargain, especially for PC parts and peripherals. Not all the Black Friday deals have been announced yet, but I managed to find 11 storage deals that are undoubtedly worth consideration.
For my favorite external storage deals, it’s a three-way split between the excellent 4TB Crucial X10 External SSD, SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 4TB SSD or going with the WD P10 5TB external HDD, which still has the edge for cost per GB, but transfer speeds are going to seem slow compared with external SSDs.
Top Black Friday external storage deals
Top internal storage deals
Black Friday storage deals: FAQs and buying advice
When does Black Friday and Cyber Monday start and end?
Officially, Black Friday 2025 begins on November 28 and continues through to Cyber Monday on December 1. It’s worth noting that some deals are kept for later in the weekend, but equally, some will end when the stock allocated to them is exhausted. But despite that “official” date, many retailers like Best Buy and Amazon are going early with their storage deals. Some are also offering a best price guarantee, so the costs won’t change from now until the end of Cyber Monday.
What storage deal should I choose during Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
Where smaller hard drives can be easily combined in a NAS box, using them in a desktop is less easy, and for hard drives, I wouldn’t consider anything smaller than 4TB. For SSDs, a 512GB drive can be useful, but ideally, 1TB should be your starting point.
That is equally true for internal and external drives, though the larger capacities are expensive for those who want 8TB in a single NVMe module.
If you are shopping for a NAS SSD, these can be more expensive per TB despite having lower performance than desktop drives. That’s because the technology in NAS SSD is oriented towards reliability and sustained operation rather than pure performance.
You can use ordinary SSDs in a NAS, NVMe and SATA, but avoid designs with integrated heatsinks, as you may have issues fitting them inside the NAS.
For students and business users, I’d suggest branded internal SSD products with a high TB reliability rating. And for external drives, focus on transfer speeds and resilience. Only buy USB4 and Thunderbolt drives if you have those ports.
What features should I check when selecting the right hard drive or SSD deal?
While hard drives are generally divided into desktop drives and those specifically for NAS use, SSDs have much greater diversity based on the type of flash memory used in them and the specification of the onboard controller.
You can often put a PCIe 5 or PCIe 4 NVMe drive in a PCIe 3 slot and it will work, it won’t deliver the performance a Gen 5 drive was designed to offer. Some laptops don’t use NVMe; they use the M.2 version of SATA. So, check your laptop or PC if you’re opting for internal storage.
Make sure that if you are swapping to a larger capacity, the PCIe number is the same, the connection protocol matches (SATA or NVMe), and the module is the correct physical size. M.2 drives typically come in 2230, 2242 and the most common 2280 sizes, and while on a desktop system, you can place a smaller 2230 or 2242 in a slot meant for 2280, the reverse isn’t true for a 2232 or 2242 slot.
While you’re here, check our recommendations for the fastest SSDs, best portable SSDs, and largest SSDs and hard drives.
How can I find the best SSD and HDD deals during Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
1. Bookmark this page.
Online resellers love to pitch a few curveballs at this time of year, so having this handy to see any last-minute bargains might be worth it.
2. Know your needs before buying. Some tactical thinking is always a good idea for those wishing to avoid buyer’s regret. Decide what parts might enhance your system the most, create a short list of hardware that fits that criteria and turn on your bloodhound bargain hunting senses.
3. Value over price
Getting the cheapest item might not be a winning strategy. Find the cheapest item, check what that offers and then see what spending a little more will gain you.
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