As the popularity of the best SSDs has increased, many people have started to write off hard drives as a thing in the past. That’s a mistake – the best hard drives offer huge amounts of storage at prices that SSDs simply can’t match. If you have a huge library of music, movies, and even photos, it’s a good idea to take a look at a traditional hard drive that will meet all your archival needs.
No matter what you need storage for, no one wants to pay the full price for essentially old technology, no matter how useful it is. As with any type of computer hardware, the suggested retail price is more of a guideline than any permanent rule.
Fortunately, we here at TechRadar have searched through hundreds of deals on the internet to find the best hard drive deals so you don’t miss out on the best sales this week. Right now, we’re nearing our annual Black Friday deals period, so it’s definitely a great time to check out the deals.
The best hard drive deals
Seagate gets the best hard drive deal with its BarraCuda drives, which provide the perfect balance of storage, speed and price. The 3 TB drives in this line are a particularly great deal as they really hit that perfect point between high-density memory and sweet 7,200 RPM spin. And they do so by keeping the price much lower than their direct competition.
So, if you’re looking for a lightweight backup or master drive and don’t want to dive into an SSD, the BarraCuda will be a great choice as it can reach read speeds of up to 190MB / s, which is more than enough for your daily work.
Best offer for gaming hard drive
Speed is the top priority when it comes to gaming. Nobody wants to play their favorite PC games just to encounter pesky load times. This is where the WD VelociRaptor drives really shine. These neat drives deliver a staggering 10,000 rpm, so you’ll spend as little time loading as possible and more time playing.
Moreover, they offer a much better price per gigabyte than even inexpensive SSDs, so if you want to cut down on downtime, you can do so while saving a few dollars.
The best deal for a hybrid hard drive
Hybrid drives combine the best features of SSDs (solid-state drives) and hard drives to provide high storage density, yet SSD speed for the data you use most often. Seagate FireCuda desktop drives take this formula and refine it by appending 2 TB of data to 8 GB of smart flash memory. This may seem like a small addition to SSD disk space, but it learns and stores the files and applications you use most often, helping you access them faster than a standard hard drive.
And now, with the ever-increasing ubiquity of SSDs, there has never been a better time to find a FireCuda deal – as with other SSHDs, prices are continually dropping.
The best deal for a laptop hard drive
Nowadays, it is becoming more and more common to build laptops with SSD disks. While this is great if you are not necessarily looking for a large amount of storage space, anyone who needs a lot of space to work will get stuck paying a very high premium. Fortunately, HGST Travelstar solves this problem by offering 1TB of storage at 7200 RPM at a very modest price.
Available in 750GB and 1TB versions, the Travelstar is a great deal for anyone looking for a great hard drive in their laptop.
The best deal for an external hard drive
Do you travel a lot for work or school? Well, if so, the WD Elements line of external drives might be perfect for you. Not only do these drives offer a great price level per gigabyte, they are small enough to be carried around effortlessly.
The WD Elements line not only offers high capacity and high portability, but also lowers the price of the competition, making it a great purchase for anyone who needs to carry their work with them.