Gift wishlists are usually full of fitness trackers, smart home tech, and streaming devices. But what about storage devices? They could be the most important thing you upgrade this year, especially if you have gigabytes (or terabytes) of important files, photos, or videos to back up.
The Best Storage Deals for January 2023
Advanced technology requires more and more storage space, from photos and videos to hefty video game downloads. Don’t count on the cloud to keep you safe: Make sure your digital storage is secure this year by upgrading your hard drive or adding a backup device for Time Machine to fill. If we’ve convinced you to spend some of that holiday cash on a new HDD or SSD for 2023 then you’re in the right place, because we’ve tracked down all the best deals on added storage space for your desktop or laptop computer.
HDD Deals
If you’re looking for a quick and simple storage solution, an external drive is your best choice to quickly back up your data. External drives plug into your machine via a USB or Thunderbolt connection and don’t require any technical know-how for installation. The main questions you have to answer are how much storage you need, how quick you need it to transfer, how durable you need your drive to be, and how much you want to spend.
When looking at an external HDD (hard disk drive), you’ll find that these are generally cheaper than SSDs (solid-state drives), but this comes at a trade-off of speed and durability. Thanks to the moving parts and spinning discs of an HDD, they’re more likely to fail over time. Transfer rates are also slower than SSDs. That said, the amount of storage available is roughly the same as an SSD, so if you need a lower-priced, short-term option that is good for transferring data between two devices, an HDD is a good fit.
If you’re comfortable opening up your desktop computer tower and making a few connections, an internal HDD can add extra storage and backup space. Yes, it’s a bit more intensive than plugging in a box to your USB port, but it’s a long-term solution that doesn’t add clutter.
Our HDD Picks
WD Elements 5TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive
The WD Elements external HDD is an affordable storage solution that comes in a variety of sizes, from 1TB to 5TB. It is compatible with PC, Mac, PS4, and Xbox and has both USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. It measures 4.35 inches long and 3.23 inches wide and won’t take up much room on your desk, TV stand, or travel bag. With 5TB, you can store a ton of photos, videos, and files.
Seagate BarraCuda 2TB 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
Seagate is a name that’s been in the HDD world for decades and it’s known to be both reliable and affordable. The BarraCuda series comes in sizes of 1TB to 8TB, so whether you’re looking for a small bump in capacity or looking to produce your own content, they’ve got you covered.
SSD Deals
Like the external HDD drives, an external SSD is easy to use: Plug it into your device with a USB or Thunderbolt connection and you can instantly have terabytes upon terabytes of data storage and backup available to you. The simplicity and speed of these drives, however, will cost you. SSDs differentiate themselves largely based on their speed: These devices make almost everything quicker, from starting apps to copying files to pulling up those files in a flash. Another benefit: Thanks to a lack of moving internal parts, these drives are less prone to failure. The downside? Because SSD technology is much newer and chip prices are ever-increasing, you might be paying up to 10x more per TB for the speed and reliability.
The benefits of an internal SSD drive are the same as the external: They’re fast, they use less power, have no moving parts, and they’re whisper-quiet. The downsides are the same: For those benefits, you’ll be paying a lot more per TB of storage. That said, prices on internal SSDs seem to be more accessible than the external devices, so adding a terabyte or two is more achievable for a little extra effort.
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Internal SSDs come in two types: the M.2 style or the 2.5-inch drives that slot into your desktop. As long as you’re going to be opening up your device to install these, you should get the most storage you can at once, so spend a few extra bucks to add at least 1TB. Most users will find that to be plenty of space for photos, videos, and music. If you’re a power content creator or a gamer, you’re probably looking in the 2TB-8TB area for your usage.
Our SSD Picks
Crucial X6 2TB USB 3.2 Portable External SSD
The Crucial X6 external SSD is tiny but mighty. With 2TB of storage space and USB 3.2 connectivity, it has a read speed of 800MB/s, making it faster than most HDDs. It can be used with PC, Mac, Android, iPad Pro—and, yes, even your next-gen consoles. It can also be used with USB-A-compatible devices via an adapter that is sold separately.
WD Black SN850 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD with Heatsink
The WD Black SN850 has read speeds of up to 7000MB/s for its 1TB and larger storage sizes. You’ll pay marginally less if you don’t get it with a heatsink built in, but considering the separate cost of heatsinks, you might as well get them together. Perhaps most importantly, this SSD is PCle Gen 4, meaning it’s compatible with the PS5. Just slide off the top cover and snap this bad boy in place, and you’ll be shocked by how quickly it blazes through load screens.
If the 1TB or 2TB (which goes out of stock fairly quickly) aren’t within your budget, there’s also the 500GB size, which will work just fine for anyone who doesn’t hoard games like some sort of digital dragon. It reads slower at 5300MBs/s, but that’s still pretty quick.
Is it better to get an all-in-one computer or desktop?
Traditional tower desktops offer the most upgrade and power flexibility, at the cost of bulk. Most towers have generous interior space and full-size motherboards, so you can install one or more (sometimes, many more) secondary storage drives, more RAM in empty slots on the motherboard, and a video card (if the PC doesn’t come with one). PC gamers will want to stick with a traditional tower.
An all-in-one desktop’s big appeal is saving you lots of space, since the PC is built right in, with the components living behind the display. It comes down to how much you care about the desk area your PC uses up, and whether you happen to be shopping for a desktop monitor at the same time. Budget AIOs with basic feature sets are common, but spending more can gain you some combination of a touch-enabled screen, a panel with high native resolution, roomier storage, and a more muscular processor. Higher-end AIO desktops tend to cater, though, to content creators and productivity-app power users, not gamers,
Is it cheaper to build a PC or buy one right now?
It depends, largely, on the kind of desktop you are looking to buy or build. At the low end, economies of scale for the components, plus the cost of single Windows 10 or 11 licenses, tend to make buying a prebuilt PC a better deal. It’s when you get into the $1,000-and-up zone that building your own starts to make more sense, especially if you can reuse parts from an existing PC build. For the last few years, the inflated cost of graphics cards made building your own PC a lot less attractive. That price pressure has relented in 2022, though.
How much does a good budget PC cost?
Expect to pay a solid $400 to $500 for a basic, competent small tower for day-in/day-out productivity and web work. You’ll find plenty of models below $400, especially in the mini PC class, but you should insist on at least 8GB of system memory for any Windows machine, and, for anything beyond very basic productivity work, a Core i3 or Ryzen 3 processor.
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