With Black Friday in the distance, and with supply chains reeling from COVID-related interruptions, retailers have started launching their Black Friday Deals earlier this year than ever; we’re weeks away from Thanksgiving and we’re already seeing some amazing opportunities to stock up on tech, appliances, and more. The good news for you is that this means you don’t have to wait to get discounts on Black Friday external hard drive deals, and take early advantage of deals on super portable 1 TB hard drives from WD or much more substantial 10 TB drives from Seagate or G-Technology. In fact, now is the very best time to buy; most of our favorite retailers, including Best Buy, have promised that any price difference between now and November 28, will be refunded to customers.
These Black Friday external hard drive deals will be joined by all sorts of other Black Friday deals on computing, gaming, and mobile tech. That said, you’ve got to be really on top of things (aka ready to hit that “add to cart” button) if you want items to arrive by Christmas or the holidays. Delivery dates for items purchased now are already stretching to the end of the month, so it’s only a matter of time until those delivery dates will be pushed until the end of December and into 2021. So make your plans for which external hard drive you want, and get on it!
Best Black Friday external hard drive deals
How to choose an external hard drive during Black Friday
There are a myriad of very appealing Black Friday External Hard Drive deals to choose from today, so many that the choice can be overwhelming. What you really need to ask yourself is which one is right for you, according to your needs. Are you suspicious of cloud computing, or often on-the-go without fast Wi-Fi, and want to bring all your files with you when traveling, even if that trip is just to a nearby cafe? Is this mainly for gaming? How much space do you actually need, and will that change over time? External Hard Drives range from 1TB pocket drives that can be placed straight in your pocket, to 12TB backup monuments that are meant to sit under your desk and stay there. To help you decide, we’ve laid out the best external hard drives from which to choose.
Your first decision is the size of storage versus portability. For the latter, we love the Samsung T5 SSD, which packs a huge amount of storage into a tiny, portable design. If you’re dealing with some older machinery, and you want something that can handle USB A and B connections, we like the SanDisk Extreme Pro as a top of the line lightweight external drive. And if you’re more professional, and perhaps your needs include lightning-fast video storage, there’s the Western Digital My Book Duo, which can store up to 28TB. Ask yourself if you need to move data around a great deal, as in from one computer to another (home to work for example) or if you’re working with one primary machine.
Next, you need to ask yourself what you’ll be using this hard drive for. Is it just for storage? In this case, your decision is pretty simple, and you can go back to figuring out just what size is right for you. But, if you have a job (or hobby) where you are regularly reading and writing to your external drive (many professionals, like architects, engineers, photographers, and video editors are doing this constantly), you have more to consider. For one, you’ll essentially want something with high read and write speeds. Part of this decision is SSD versus HDD (SDD tends to be more reliable, smaller, faster, sturdier, and more expensive). While a contemporary HDD can be pretty fast, with 7,200 rpm being the standard, some are still limping along at 5,400 rpm, so double-check what speed you’re getting. Regardless, SSD drives measure their random access times in microseconds rather than milliseconds, so they tend to be much, much faster.
Additionally, you’ll want to consider the drive’s connectivity. If it doesn’t have the current USB 3.0 technology, you might want to give it a second look. An older connection can bottleneck speeds of even the faster SSD or HDDs, and you don’t want to cut your read and write speed off at the legs.
Where to find the best external hard drive sales
- Amazon Black Friday: At Amazon, you’ll find discounts on everything from monster 16TB external hard drives from Seagate to tiny flash drives and external 2TB drives that fit super easily into a bag or briefcase.
- Best Buy Black Friday: Best Buy has jumped in early this year but there are still tons of discounted items from the best brands in external hard drives, like WD, Seagate, and LaCie.
- Target Black Friday: Target also joined the price-cutting party and is currently offering deals on external hard drives from Seagate, SanDisk, LaCie, and more.
- Walmart Black Friday: Walmart refuses to be left out of the discount battle royal, offering deals on every kind of external hard drive from Samsung, Seagate, SanDisk, and more.
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