Almost a week away from the big day itself, we’re starting to see Black Friday SSD and hard drive deals pour in from all the major retailers and vendors.
Picking up a shiny new SSD or hard drive on Black Friday is one of the most economical ways to give your PC a major boost, for gamers and creative professionals alike. And although components like processors and graphics cards are unlikely to be discounted for supply reasons, we expect storage deals aplenty.
SSDs and hard drives are actually some of the few components expected to be in good supply this Black Friday, with silicon shortages affecting stock availability for other PC components. This is far from ideal if you’re needing to kit out a full rig from scratch, but anyone looking to buy some of the best SSDs or best HDDs on the market at a decent discount should be covered.
We’re now only a week away from Black Friday 2021, which falls on November 26. Ahead of time, we’re going to tell you exactly what to expect when Black Friday comes around, and how to secure the best possible deals on SSDs and hard drives.
It pays to make sure you’re ready, because every year Black Friday becomes a bigger deal. And Black Friday isn’t just about the one day any more; the entire November and December period is now packed full of incredible offers, and SSDs and hard drives are no exception.
To make sure you’re ready for the best Black Friday SSD and hard drive deals, we’ll regularly update this page, so make sure to check back regularly.
Today’s best SSD and hard drive deals
If you need internal or external storage and can’t wait until Black Friday itself, there are plenty of top-notch products available with discounts right now. We’ve searched through our best SSD and hard drive guides to find the best options if you need some new hardware right away.
1TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe M.2 SSD – $179.98 $149.99 from Amazon
Save 17% – This 1TB M.2 drive from Sabrent is faster than most drives on the market, which makes it the perfect choice for gamers.
1TB Kingston NV1 NVMe SSD: $104.99 $79.99 from Amazon
This 1TB NVMe M.2 drive from Kingston is available from Amazon for roughly 25% off right now. It might not be Black Friday just yet, but we think you’ll struggle to find a better SSD deal this shopping season.
WD Blue SN550 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD: £90.41 £69.98 from Ebuyer
The SN550 from Western Digital is currently available with a 15% discount. It’s not as fast as a WD Black drive, but it’s hard to pass up at this price point. Note, this is a UK-only deal.
Our predictions
The good thing about Black Friday discounts starting in Autumn and lasting until Christmas is that almost every product will have its price reduced at some point, and sometimes more than once. That means you’ve got plenty of chances to find reduced prices on top storage choices.
You’ll be able to find discounts on every kind of storage, from internal SSDs and hard drives to external products. Deals will be available on newer and older products, with only brand-new hardware excluded from big price drops. You’ll get offers from every big brand in the storage space, from consumer firms like Crucial, Western Digital, and Samsung to top business-focused brands like Seagate, LaCie, and SanDisk.
One thing to bear in mind is that hard drives are almost always cheaper than SSDs, for performance reasons, so internal and external hard drive products will likely only have relatively small price drops. The higher price of internal and external SSDs means there’s more chance of bigger price reductions, especially on slightly older products that still offer impressive speeds.
Tips for buying an SSD or HDD
It’s easy to assume that SSDs and hard drives are simple products when compared to laptops, TVs, or PCs, but there’s still plenty to consider if you want to buy new storage.
SSDs are more popular for a couple of crucial reasons: even affordable SSDs are far faster than the average hard disk, and they’re smaller, too. The lack of moving parts also means they’re less susceptible to breakages.
While an SSD will always be quicker than a hard drive, different kinds of SSDs do exhibit different speed levels. The best cheap SSDs use the slower SATA connection standard, while the best M.2 drives are quicker but pricier. At the top of the tree are PCIe 4.0 drives, which provide the fastest speeds alongside the highest prices.
If you’re buying the best internal hard drive you can find, you’ll have to accept a slower pace when compared to SSDs. Nevertheless, remember that 3.5in drives are almost always faster than 2.5in products and that 7,200rpm drives are quicker than 5,400rpm disks.
Make sure you’re buying an SSD or hard drive that’s got enough capacity, and then think about the particular attributes of internal and external hardware. If you buy an internal SSD or hard drive, ensure you’ve got the requisite motherboard connections and space free inside your machine.
If you’ve got external storage in your sights, check that your other hardware supports its type of connector, and consider its dimensions and weight. It could also be worth buying a ruggedized hard drive to ensure that it survives life on the road. Make sure your new drive has a top-notch warranty, too.
If you want to buy a hard drive for a specialist business PC or the best gaming SSD for your entertainment, there are some additional considerations.
Business buyers should buy an SSD or a hard drive that has a higher endurance rating. That’s because productivity PCs and laptops tend to read and write files to storage at a greater frequency than the storage used in consumer systems. That’s true for internal and external hardware in equal measure.
It’s also worth investing in storage with built-in backup options like cloud storage to ensure that you don’t lose vital files, and if you’re going to store sensitive data then many SSDs and hard drives also have encryption.
Gamers need to address a different set of concerns. Speed and capacity are vital here: if the former is good, your loading times and boot speeds will be better, and if the latter is large enough, you’ll never run out of room. If you want an SSD to upgrade your PS5, then make sure the console supports it before you click the buy button.
When will the best Black Friday SSD and hard drive deals start in 2021?
This year’s Black Friday falls on November 26, but the event is no longer just about one day of deals. Instead, you can find incredible discounts and deals throughout November and December if you know where to look.
While it’s still true that Black Friday itself usually has the best deals, retailers are increasingly launching offers earlier to try and undercut and outcompete their rivals. Usually, buyers can generally find the best discounts from the start of Thanksgiving Week, which begins on November 22nd.
This date might be pulled even further forward this year, as retailers look to pick up early sales to mitigate the likelihood of running out of stock on Black Friday itself.
We anticipate that storage deals will be easy to find throughout the entire season – the market is a battlefield, with many products available at slim margins and low prices, and fierce competition means loads of discounts. That’s doubly true now: with people adding storage to consoles and needing more storage for their content-creation work, people are eager to buy, and companies are keen to sell.
The pandemic contributed to these trends, with more people working from home and buying more technology, and we fully expect that to continue in 2021.
Where can I find the best Black Friday SSD and hard drive deals?
If you’ve got this page bookmarked, then you’ll be able to find all of the best SSD and hard drive deals in one place thanks to our regular updates.
If you’d like to hunt for your discounts, then it’s worth checking out some of the more prominent retailers. There are lots of stores to choose from, and they have strengths and weaknesses. We’ve highlighted the best retailers in the US and UK so you know exactly where to look.
Top US retailers:
Amazon: every big and small brand with frequent discounts
Best Buy: an easy-to-navigate site with the biggest names
Walmart: good prices from a trusted retailer
Newegg: a specialist tech retailer with a huge range
Western Digital: the biggest company in storage has its own extensive store
Top UK retailers:
Amazon: low prices with every major brand represented
Currys: big names, good prices, and with collections from physical stores too
Argos: rock-solid prices for external hard drives and SSDs
Ebuyer: a trusted specialist that sells every big brand
Scan: a top-notch retailer with big names and obscure options
Overclockers: ideal for high-performance tech and gaming gear
3 best SSD and hard drives to watch out for
If you need some inspiration on what products to keep an eye on as we approach Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the following are our top choices for anyone looking to upgrade their storage.
There’s no guarantee that these will be discounted of course, but it’s worth doing some research on what SSDs and HDDs are worth buying as there are sure to be a lot of deals across popular sites, and not every device is worth buying, even at a discount.
Best SSD: Samsung 980 Pro
Samsung throws its hat into the PCIe 4.0 ring
Capacity: 250GB – 1TB | Interface: PCIe Gen 4.0 x 4, NVMe 1.3c | Warranty: Limited warranty up to 5 years or up to the TBW for each capacity
Extreme performanceCompetitive priceGood endurance ratingPCIe 3.0 users better off with cheaper drive
If you can afford to spare no expense in getting a storage drive, then the Samsung 980 Pro may just be the best SSD for you. This is the fastest SSD we’ve ever tested, making it ideal for future-proofing your rig – especially when you get the 1TB capacity. And, while it’s not the cheapest SSD on the market, it delivers that speed without substantially raising the price over its rivals. Just remember that in order to take full advantage of its speed, a Gen4 SSD is vital.
Read the full review: Samsung 980 Pro
Best hard drive: Seagate BarraCuda
High RPM and storage at a low price
Interface: SATA 6Gbps | Capacity: 2 – 3TB | Cache: 64MB | RPM: 7,200
Low costFast spinning disks Limited cache
It’s almost impossible to talk about hard drives without mentioning Seagate’s BarraCuda lineup – it’s a force to be reckoned with. And, it’s not hard to see why, Seagate BarraCuda drives offer a great gigabyte-per-dollar ratio and speed benefits to top it off. The 2TB model hits a sweet spot by balancing high performance and affordability. Since this drive combines 7,200rpm platters and high density data, computers outfitted with this drive will be able to read data extraordinarily fast.
Best NVMe SSD: Samsung 970 Evo Plus
Pushing Samsung further
Capacity: 250GB/500GB/1TB/2TB | Interface: PCIe Gen 3 x4 M.2 | Warranty: 5-years
CheapTop-end performanceSequential write speeds slow under load
Samsung is no stranger to creating some of the best SSDs, so when it launched the Samsung 970 Evo Plus with higher speeds and new silicon, even we were surprised. The Samsung 970 Evo Plus is simply one of the fastest drives on the market, but the fact that Samsung is selling it at such a bargain price is just the icing on the cake. Because of how affordable this drive is, it’s not hard to recommend it as the best SSD for anyone.
Read the full review: Samsung 970 Evo Plus
Last year’s best Black Friday SSD and hard drive deals
The SSD and hard drive categories are some of the busiest in the entire technology market, so it’s no surprise there were plenty of top-notch deals on Black Friday last year. And while it’s easy to forget about last year’s price drops, it makes sense to go back and see what happened back then, because that’ll give you a clue about what to expect from Black Friday in 2021.
We’ve hand-picked some of the best deals from last year so you can see what kind of savings were available. They’re great deals, and that bodes well for 2021: with Black Friday being bigger than ever, retailers will be trying even harder to capture your cash.
Samsung T7 USB-C SSD 1TB – $199.99 $156.18 at Amazon
Save $43.81 – Samsung is one of the biggest players in the storage world, and the T7 external SSD delivers speed and space in a tiny, robust design. This drive is fast enough to use with your PS5 or Xbox One X console, and it was available with an impressive discount in 2020.
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB – $199.99 $99 at Amazon
Save $100 – Samsung delivered an incredible internal SSD deal in 2020, too. The 860 EVO isn’t the fastest SSD, but it’s quicker than any hard disk, offers 1TB of space, and was literally halved in price. It was one of the best ways to add lashings of storage to your desktop PC.
LaCie Rugged Mini 4TB External Hard Drive – $144.99 $104.99 at Amazon
Save 30% – this monster drive isn’t just huge: it has a robust, rock-solid exterior that withstands drops, falls, shocks, water submersion, and more. It was discounted last year, too, which made it a tempting option for people who need storage in extreme situations.
Toshiba Canvio Advance 2TB Portable External Hard Drive – $69.99 $55.99 at Amazon
Save $14 – this compact, unfussy option from Toshiba delivers loads of space at a bargain-basement price, and in 2020 its value improved even more with a solid discount. It’s the best time of year to get backup storage without spending loads of cash.
Seagate Expansion Desktop 6TB External Hard Drive – $124.99 $94.99 at Amazon
Save $30 – creatives who work with photography or video know the value of storage, and this Seagate deal served up loads of space at an impressive price. If you churn out big files and need them stored securely, this is an affordable and efficient choice.
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD – $499.99 $249.99 at Amazon
Save $250 – the 970 Evo is one of Samsung’s fastest-ever SSDs, and so it’s perfect for workstations, gaming PCs, and other systems where speed is vital. And on Black Friday 2020 it was halved in price – so it was a stunning deal.
