Black Friday is a great opportunity to get cheap bulk storage. Here’s how to put the “cheap” back into RAID.
Flash storage: what you need to know
With more than a dozen form factors, selecting the best flash memory card and SSD technology for your devices can be daunting. Karen Roby and James Sanders discuss the options available.
Black Friday is on its way and lands on November 29 this year, which brings many opportunities to save deals. Despite almost every company pushing a Dropbox competitor – such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Apple iCloud and Amazon Drive – there is still a convincing case for local storage, especially since regular smartphones can record video in 4K.
Whether you are looking for upgrades for your computer, an external hard drive, a NAS solution (Network Attached Storage) or just a flash memory card for your phone, there are countless offers to be found.
TechRepublic will update this list as soon as retailers announce the sale and the sale ends. Listed offers may not be effective, or may be reference links to products with retail prices in the store; Similarly, popular deals may sell out before the sale is scheduled to end.
Black Friday deals for solid-state drives (SSDs)
Solid-state drives are where the big excitement has been and has been for some time – the switch from a traditional hard drive to an SSD can significantly improve Windows performance. In terms of read / write speed, the 2.5-inch SATA SSD is inferior to PCI Express-linked M.2 SSDs, although not all .2 drives are equal – the inclusion of PCIe 4.0 in the second-generation Ryzen CPUs from AMD has a created a market for PCIe 4.0 SSDs, while most regular drives are PCIe 3.0.
For more information about the different types of flash storage used in SSDs and removable media, see the TechRepublic cheat sheet for flash storage.
Black Friday deals on internal hard drives
Traditional hard drives cannot be surpassed for bulk storage. Models available in retail stores now push a capacity of 16 TB and offer a better price per GB than with SSDs. Black Friday brings these prices even further down.
Black Friday deals on NAS hardware
Given the relatively small amount of storage on certain smartphones and the difficulty of packing bulk storage on laptops, a NAS device that allows access on the network and via the internet, if configured for that access level. Earlier this year, TechRepublic interviewed Alex Wang, CEO of Synology America, about the increasing use and importance of NAS hardware.
Black Friday deals on external hard drives
2.5 “external hard drives are great for bulk storage on the move, while 3.5” external drives are great for people with mass storage needs, especially laptop users sitting at a desk.
The WD Easystore is a popular option among hobbyists who want to save money on storage for their RAID arrays – fairly lucky buyers have found enterprise-grade WD Red drives inside, although white-label variants for external enclosures are more common. This YouTube video shows the “shucking” procedure for opening the Easystore case.
Black Friday sales on USB drives
USB drives have become ubiquitous – smaller capacities can even be found in supermarkets. Black Friday sees generous discounts on larger capacity USB drives, as well as newer drives with native USB-C ports or double-sided USB and Lightning ports for use with Apple devices.
Black Friday sales on SD, microSD and CompactFlash cards
Despite the cloud prevalence, removable media still has a fixed position in a variety of applications, from professional cameras to game consoles; some Android handsets still contain microSD slots. With full-size SD and microSD cards reaching 1 TB this year, the potential savings for all capacities should be felt during Black Friday.
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