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- US external hard drive deals
- UK external hard drive deals
- All you need to know
It doesn't really seem like Black Friday and Cyber Monday external hard drive deals ever ended this year! No doubt encouraged by a surge in home-working, there's been a huge increase in demand in digital storage, and lots of retailers seem keen to shift their stock for Cyber Monday and beyond.
We'll be putting together all the best deals in the UK, US, and the rest of the world on this page, so all you have to do it bookmark it. If you need to brush up on what type of external hard drive is best for you, head over to our all you need to know section (we've broken the below into the best traditional hard drives and the best SSDs). And if you're interested in finding a broader range of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that are still going, we've got you covered there too.
Post-Cyber Monday external hard drive deals: Quicklinks
- Amazon.com: Limited $65/£65 off Samsung SSD, plus loads more
- Best Buy.com: Loads of exclusive savings across several brands
- Office Depo.com: $27 off Western Digital 2TB external hard drive, plus more
- Walmart.com: Next-day delivery on hundreds of models
- B&H Photo.com: Hundreds of dollars off top external hard drives
- Very.co.uk: Up to £40 off selected external hard drives from the UK
- Currys'/PC World.co.uk: There are a range of top deals on top quality brands
- Amazon.co.uk: Limited $65/£65 off Samsung SSD, plus loads more
- John Lewis.co.uk: There will be loads of great savings to be had here
The best Cyber Monday external hard drive deals: US
The best Cyber Monday traditional hard drive deals
WD Easystore | 1TB: $84.99 $39.99 at Best Buy
Save $45: Western Digital's Best Buy-only Easystore hard drive is perfect for keeping media files that you want to get to easily and quickly. It's got good reading and writing speeds for a traditional hard drive (2mins for 10GB transfer speed, read and write), and right now, is under half price. At $40, this is a great deal!
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WD Elements | 1TB: $84 $42.49 at Amazon
Save $41.51: Much the same to the top deal, but in the Elements range, if you want a 1TB traditional hard drive for under $45, you can't go wrong with this WD Elements model. Perfect for storing all your media, photos, home work and work files, and with its USB 3.0 connectivity, it's super fast. Bargain!
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WD Easystore | 2TB: $109.99 $54.99 at Best Buy
Save $55: Again, like the above model, this is quick and easy to use – perfect for storing media that you need to get to quickly (like films and TV shows). With no security (like the WD My Passport), it's usually cheap, and right now, you can save 50% off at Best Buy.
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WD Easystore | 4TB: $149.99 $79.99 at Best Buy
Save $70: More of the same great deal! This time, you get 4TB for well under $100. Plenty of storage to keep all media, personal photos and files, and still have room for more! However, if you're looking for a bit more security, why don't you try...
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WD My Passport | 5TB: $149.99 $99.99 at Best Buy
Save $50: The My Passport range from Western Digital has built-in encryption, so it's super secure, and ideal for backup purposes. It's better suited for work purposes, or if you want to keep your personal files safe, and with its USB 3.0, it's super fast in transfer.
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Seagate One Touch | 2TB: $99.99 $57.99 at Amazon
Save $42: There's 42% off the price of this Seagate One Touch over at Amazon for Cyber Monday. You get a roomy 2TB traditional hard drive with a USB 3.0, and a 4 Months Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan, so it's ideal for creatives. Go for the 5TB for just $105.
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WD My Passport | 5TB: $149.99 $99.99 at Amazon
Save $50: This ultra-slim external hard drive comes with password protection and auto backup software, so it's more geared to important files, especially if they're for work, or personal. You also get a tidy $50 off the list price.
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The best Cyber Monday SSD deals
SanDisk Extreme | 2TB: $449.99 $199.99 at Best Buy
Save $250: This is by far the best SSD deal we've found so far for Cyber Monday. But why go SSD? Well, their transfers speeds are around 9 times faster than traditional (HDD) external hard disk drives. If you move a lot of large files, or want to run programs off the drive, SSD are for you. And a bargain is a bargain! Get a whopping $250 off this brand-leading SanDisk 2TB model.
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Samsung T7 SSD | 500GB: $109.99 $79.99 at Amazon
Save $30: The Samsung T7 is one of Creative Bloq's top external hard drives right now, and you can get this 500GB model with a nice $30 discount. These are lightning fast, and ideal for creative professionals who need super-secure transfer of large media files.
Need more storage, and more money off? Try... View Deal
Samsung T7 SSD | 1TB: $199.99 $149.99 at Amazon
Save $50: This 1TB version of the Samsung T7 is a bargain, over at Amazon at the moment. They generally hold their value all year around, so to see a modest $50 taken off the price is welcome. Again, the T7 is one of our top favourite hard drives, so it's well worth a buy.
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Samsung T7 SSD | 2TB: $369.99 $279.99 at Amazon
Save $90: Why have we laid out all these Samsung SSD deals? Because they're all great, and each iteration, and they're accompanying savings, are well worth consideration. This is the highest end, biggest storage, and therefore most expensive. And yet what a bargain, with nearly $100 off?! Hard drives don't get much bigger or faster than this.
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WD My Passport | 2TB: $449.99 $239.99 at Best Buy
Save $210: This is the second biggest saving that we've found, and on our all-time favourite external hard drive – the WD My Passport. It's SSD, so boasts incredibly fast transfer speeds, and as it's My Passport, it has built-in encryption making it secure for heavy duty backup of massive work files.
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The best Cyber Monday external hard drive deals: UK
Seagate, 6TB HDD: £130 £83.49 at Amazon
Save £46.50: This traditional hard drive has USB 3.0 connectivity, and will house all your digital work and media comfortably. At 6TB, it's a massive drive, with a classy black finish.
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WD My Passport, 1TB, SSD: £222 £137.98 at Amazon
Save £84: This is a solid state drive with a super fast read speed of up to 1050MB/s. At 1TB, there's plenty of room for your digital work. It's password enabled, and will take a two-metre fall, no problems.
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WD My Cloud, 8TB: £317 £257.63 at Amazon
Save £56.97: This is the Western Digital My Cloud home storage device, which plugs into your Wi-Fi router and saves all your digital content in one central place. 8TB is a lot, so you can back up all your laptops and computers too. Huge storage with a huge saving.
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WD My Book 6 TB: £192 £151 at Amazon
Save £41: An incredible saving on a great piece of tech. With enough storage to put your entire life in there, this is an excellent choice of external hard drive. It has WD backup software compatible with Apple Time Machine and Windows.
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LaCie Rugged Mini, 4 TB: £149.99 £144 at Amazon
Save £5.99: LaCie's external hard drive is designed to be shock and drop resistant. It's brighter than many other external hard drives on the market and this model has 4TB of storage.
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WD 8TB Elements: £169.99 £125 at Amazon
Save £45: An enormous machine with super-fast USB 3.0 transfer, that's plug-and-play ready for Windows PCs. You can get yourself an amazing 26% off this hard drive.
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Samsung T5, 500GB SDD: £178.74 £77.01 at Amazon
Save £101.73: This 500GB hard drive is a solid state drive (SSD), which means it's really fast when it comes to transferring data. It usually also means it's really expensive, too, but at half price, with £86 taken off the price, it's a bargain. The compact and light drive is perfect for getting hold of digital data quickly.
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Samsung T5, 1TB SSD: £189.99 £137 at Amazon
Save £52: If you want to double up the storage space to 1TB, but keep the speed of the SSD, this is a great deal. Knocking 27% off the price, it'll be perfect for when you need to access big media files quickly.
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Samsung T5, 2TB SSD: £370 £289 at Amazon
Save £81: There's a reason the Samsung T5 was given the second spot in our ranking of the best external hard drives and SSDs. It offers speedy performance and is small and portable. This is the max storage size, at 2TB, and comes with a nice £84 off!
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SanDisk Extreme, 256GB: £58 £31.99 at Amazon
Save £26: This might be the best digital storage deal so far. A whopping 45% – £26 – off the price of this 256GB memory card, with a transfer rate of up to 160 MB/s.
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The three best external hard drives
For an excellent all-round external hard drive, you'll have a tough job beating Western Digital's My Passport 4TB. The latest generation features excellent transfer speeds and cloud storage options as well as 256-AES encryption to keep your files safe, and WD's backup software will take care of transferring your data.
If speed's more important to you than capacity, this external SSD from Samsung ought to do the trick. The Samsung T5 SSD performs brilliantly, with speeds up to 550 MB/sec. It plugs directly into PCs and Macs with either a USB-C port or USB-A, is roughly the size of a matchbox and, as a solid state device, contains no moving parts, so can survive being dropped unlike a hard disk.
Serious about protecting your files? This 16TB monster from Western Digital is for you. You can either use the full 16TB, or you can instead run the My Book Duo's two 8TB drives in a RAID configuration, meaning that should one fail you'll still have a safe backup on the other. This USB 3.0 drive also features 256-bit AES encryption and automatic backup software; bear in mind though that it's formatted for Windows, so if you're on a Mac it'll need reformatting.
External hard drives: All you need to know
OK, so external hard drives aren't especially the sexiest of all tech. As such, you're not going to see much in the way of headline-grabbing Black Friday hard drive deals. If you're after a bargain external drive then you're going to have to look hard for it... or you would, if we weren't here to do the hard work for you.
Your best bet for a getting a great deal on an external drive is to keep an eye on the big hitters. Companies such as Western Digital, Seagate, LaCie and Sandisk are notable for having large ranges of external drives, and they're introducing new models on a pretty regular basis.
This means that come Black Friday (Cyber Monday), they're likely to have plenty of stock of models that have either been recently superseded by a newer version, or simply aren't selling as well as other external drives in their range, and these will be the most obvious candidates for the best deals. And we're already seeing a few deals from these brands emerge as Black Friday approaches.
Our top tip for Black Friday external hard drive bargains is to look out for Western Digital offers (you can see the best WD My Passport deals right now). It has a huge range of external drives on offer, and there's usually at least one bargain to be found among them; we expect there to be some great opportunities to nab a lot of storage for not very much cash.
How to get the best external hard drive deals on Cyber Monday 2020
If you have your heart set on Cyber Monday external hard drive deals then the best thing you can do is start looking out for them now. There's an increasing amount of competition between retailers to shift their discounted stock, so every year we're seeing stores and sites kick off their Cyber Monday sales earlier.
Figure out your budget and exactly what kind of drive you're looking for. If you need plenty of storage and aren't too worried about transfer speeds then you should probably concentrate on old-fashioned hard drives; they might not be fast but they'll give you a lot more gigabytes for your buck.
If speed's important, though, you should look for an SSD instead. They're fast and reliable, and because they have no moving parts they're a lot more suitable for taking out and about with you. The downside is that you get a lot less storage than you would from a comparably priced hard disk; that said as the technology matures you can now get a decent chunk of storage at a pretty reasonable price.
The best brands for external hard drive
Always look for big name brands such as Western Digital, Seagate, LaCie or Sandisk when you're searching for an external drive; not only are these where you'll probably find the best deals, you can also be much more certain of getting a reliable drive that won't fail on you. If you spot a dirt-cheap drive from a brand you've never heard of, look around for reviews to get an idea of its reliability; it could be cheap for a very good reason, and it's probably not where you want to stash your important backups.
Don't forget to check an assortment of retailers for the biggest choice. Amazon's Cyber Monday deals are always worth a look, but explore some other online stores as well. Some of them might have cash back offers that could save you a bit extra, so that's always worth looking out for. Very, Best Buy and Walmart are also worth keeping an eye on.
Traditional hard drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD)?
There are two types of external hard drive: hard disk drives (HDD, also known as mechanical or traditional hard drives) or solid state drives (SSD). An SSD is faster, lighter and less power-hungry, whereas an HDD drive will be cheaper and slower than an SSD. HDDs are also good for storing lots of data as they often have a high capacity.
So, if you want to store huge amounts of data while keeping prices low, a HDD is the way to go. But if speed is your top priority – for example, if you move a lot of large files, or want to run programs off the drive – then choose an SSD. Or, you can always use a smaller SSD for files that you need to access or move around often, and then store the other data that you use less often on a higher capacity HDD.
External hard drive features that creatives should look out for
Once you've decided whether you need a hard disk or an SSD, the key thing to look for is the amount of storage you'll get. It all depends on your needs, naturally; 500GB is probably fine if you don't work with enormous files, but if your business involves videos then you're probably well into terabyte territory.
Beyond that, the most important thing to check is what type of connections an external drive has. At the very minimum you'll need a USB 3.0 connection; anything less and you'll be waiting ages for your files to transfer back and forth. If you have a recent Mac then it may have a Thunderbolt 3 port; if so, try to find a drive that's compatible and you'll get lightning-fast transfer speeds.
Yet more Cyber Monday external hard drive deals
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