Black Friday SSD and Storage Deals Live: Best Sales on Internal and External Drives

Our favorite 20 Gbps portable SSD, Crucial's X10, Pro drops to its lowest price this year

Crucial's 20 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2) X10 Pro has been on our list of best external SSDs since we reviewed it more than a year ago. While we've tested several direct competitors since then, none have bested it in overall performance, and particularly in sustained write speeds. And while its price has mostly gone up in 2024 thanks to the whims of flash storage demands, the X10 Pro 2TB is now back down to its lowest price this year, of $146.99 at Amazon.

Crucial X10 Pro portable SSD: was $200 now $147 at Amazon

Crucial's top-end external SSD boasts speeds as high as 2,100 MB/s and sports a premium-feeling metal exterior. It's small, fast, and a great buy for backups or bulk file transfers at its lowest price of 2024.

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The X10 Pro was prices as low as $129.99 around this time last year, but that was before the storage market as a whole saw price increases. Since July, the drive has hovered below or above $200, and we don't expect it to hit last year's low in today's market, so this is likely the best time to buy it if you've been waiting for a price drop.

The X10 Pro's performance in our test was great overall, but it stands out in particular in our sustained write test, where it was able to maintain near-peak speeds for well over 10 minutes. Note that the other 20 Gbps drives here fall off and become much slower much sooner. For this reason, the X10 Pro is a great drive for professional use, and it's super-fast for more casual data storage as well. Just make sure your system has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 USB port if you want to get the most from this drive. With most other ports, including over Thunderbolt, this drive will top out at 10 Gbps speeds.

Black Friday at Best Buy sees this 20TB WD Easystore external HDD hit $249

Always useful, external storage solutions are a very convenient way to backup or transfer your data. Create redundancy and save your most important photos and videos on multiple devices, or if you want to cannibalize the drive you can "shuck" the HDD out of the enclosure if you don't mind voiding the warranty.

Head to Best Buy where you can pick up the 20TB WD Easystore for just $249. This is a fantastic Black Friday deal offer and one of the cheapest 20TB external drives that we've spotted so far.

WD Easystore 20TB External HHD: now $249 at Best Buy (was $449)
This Black Friday Best Buy bargain sees the 20TB WD Easystore external HDD reduced by $200 from the original MSRP. This USB 3.0 enclosure connects via USB and is powered by an included AC adapter.

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The WD Easystore thanks to USB 3.0 can offers data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps in the USB 3.0 mode and even speeds up to 480 Mbps in the USB 2.0 mode. Sure its not the fastest form of storage, but you aren't going to get 20TB SSDs anytime soon, and certainly nowhere near this price.

The Fastest USB Stick Around is at an All-Time Low

I absolutely love the SK hynix Tube T31 and have two of them which I use on a regular basis. These have the drive-on-a-stick form factor of a USB Flash drive, but the company touts this as an "external SSD" because of its blazing fast performance.

Whatever you call it, the Tube T31 is the external SSD to get if you want great speeds and a ton of convenience. It has a built-in USB Type-A port that can use a 10 Gbps (USB 3.x Gen 2) port or a regular USB 3 port. It's rated for up to 1,000 MB/s and now it's just $59, reduced from $84 for the 1TB model.

SK hynix Tube T31 1TB: was $84, now $59 at Amazon
This external SSD, which is in the form factor of a USB Flash drive, plugs right into your USB Type-A port and delivers speeds of up to 1,000 MB/s read and write.

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When we reviewed the T31, we were impressed with its performance on PC Mark10 where it dominated the competition, coming within just a few points of the Kingston DataTraveler max and Transcend ESD310C.

And we were even more impressed with how it performed on DiskBench, during a 10GB transfer.

What I like about the SK hynix Tube T31 is just how easy it is to carry around and deploy for important tasks. I've used it to install Windows on a number of machines or transfer large files from one PC in my home to another. It's always quick. It feels very sturdy and it just works.

The Best 4TB SSD is Just 6.5 Cents Per GB

Samsung's 990 Pro is our favorite PCIe 4.0 SSD, thanks to its industry-leading performance and great Samsung software. Other PCIe 4.0 drives like the WD Black SN850X are neck and neck with the 990 Pro, but it's a perennial favorite, not only because it's fast, but because people love Samsung.

The 4TB Samsung 990 Pro offers really strong performance; it's rated for sequential reads and writes of 7,450 and 6,900 MBps along with 1.6 / 1.55 million read and write IOPS. It also promises 2,400 TBW of endurance to go with its 5-year warranty.

Normally, you'd pay $300 or more for the 990 Pro 4TB, but today it's just $269 at Amazon. That's a strong 6.5 cents per GB. Sure, there are slightly cheaper 4TB drives out there, but they don't dominate our benchmark tests.

Samsung 990 Pro (4TB) SSD: now $269 at Amazon (was $464)
The Samsung 990 Pro 4TB delivers 7,450 MB/s reads and 6,900 MB/s writes, making it one of the fastest and best PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market.

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If you take a closer look at its specs, you see that the Samsung 990 Pro also provides TCG/Opal 2.0 encryption. And it uses an LPDDR4 DRAM cache to back up its 236-layer V-NAND TLC memory.

The 990 Pro not only has great specs, but great performance on our benchmarks. For example, it had the highest score of its competitors on the 3DMark Storage bandwidth test.

Great performance, great brand and great price. This is a tough deal to beat.

8TB of Speedy SSD at an Epic Low Price

For most people, even a 4TB SSD seems luxurious. But, if you need more storage and you don't want (or aren't able to) combined multiple drives in the same system, an 8TB drive is ideal. There aren't many 8TB drives on the market, but WD Black's SN850X is available in this spacious capacity and its now on sale for just $549 at Amazon, reduced from $694.

WD_Black SN850X 8TB: now $549 at Amazon (was $879)
A huge capacity M.2 SSD, the 8TB version of the popular WD_Black SN850X has sequential read and write speeds of 7,200 MB/s and 6,600 MB/s respectively. With a TBW endurance of 4,800TB. This is one of the fastest and largest capacity PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 SSDs available.

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The SN850X 8TB is a PCIe Gen 4 drive that's rated for 7,200 MB/s sequential reads, 6,600 MB/s and 1.2 million IOPS for read and write. It has a five year warranty and write endurance of 4,800 TBW (terabytes written).

The WD Black SN850X is also the fastest 8TB drive we've tested, easily outpacing competitors on both latency and bandwidth tests.

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In short, this is a high-performing, high-capacity drive at an epic low price.