The Best Prime Day Deals on Internal and External Storage: Seagate, SanDisk, and WD

For a while there, it looked like storage hardware was on its way out—we’d just keep everything in the cloud and download it when we needed it. But the pendulum is swinging back the other way: It’s smart to back stuff up locally, because it’s an uncertain world out there. For instance, something you’d been planning to watch on a streaming service could just vanish—but if it’s on your local storage it’s yours forever. If you’re looking to expand your space, Amazon has a number of deep Prime Day discounts on hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs), and microSDXC cards from reliable brands including Western Digital, SanDisk, and Samsung.

Of course, this is just a tiny fraction of all the Prime Day storage deals. Check out this computers and accessories page(Opens in a new window) to see all available deals, and compare them with our hard drive reviews to find what you need.

When you’re buying any storage device, we recommend making sure it’s compatible with whatever system you’re expanding or upgrading. You can go to the manufacturer’s product page and check which media format your PC takes and how much capacity it can handle, since some devices have a storage limit. YouTube can be a good source for installation run-throughs and which tools you’ll need to install an internal HDD or SSD.

WD 2TB Elements SE Portable SSD (Credit: Amazon)

WD 2TB Elements SE 2TB Portable Solid-State Drive

The Elements SE is already a very affordable 2TB drive, but a Prime Day price drop brings the price down nearly to cost. The Elements line isn’t designed for speedy access—instead, the products are best employed as full-drive backups in case of an emergency. This drive is ridiculously tiny, measuring just over 2.5 inches on each side, but it’s extremely durable and comes with a three-year warranty. It’s not lightning-fast, but for most operations, it will do the job.

SanDisk 2TB Extreme V2 Portable SSD (Credit: Amazon)

SanDisk 2TB Extreme USB-C Portable Solid-State Drive

The second-generation Extreme drive from SanDisk doesn’t have any one feature that makes it stand out from the competition, but it does everything well enough to garner an Editors’ Choice award from PCMag. In our review, we called it “solid external SSD for frequent travelers and content creators alike,” and we stand by that evaluation. Its IP55 water- and dust-resistance rating means it can stand up to the elements, but it comes with a five-year warranty just in case.

Crucial P3 4TB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD (Credit: Amazon)

Crucial P3 4TB PCIe 3.0 3D NAND NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive

We gave the Crucial P3 SSD an “Outstanding” rating in our review: It offers “the right combination of affordability, capacity, and performance to earn a PCMag Editors’ Choice award as a budget PCIe 3.0 internal drive.” For older computers that haven’t upgraded to PICe 4.0, this might be one of the best options for a high-storage internal drive that benchmarks well at a reasonable price.

Seagate Expansion 16TB External HD (Credit: Amazon)

Seagate Expansion 16TB External HD

If your storage requirements are beefy, this brick of a drive from Seagate gives you a massive 16 terabytes at a very reasonable price. With a separate power supply, this drive works with powered or unpowered USB 3.0 or 2.0 hubs, is simple and easy to use, and can store just about anything you want—games, movies, and music—with room to spare. This drive has a big footprint, over 7 inches long. But all that data has to go somewhere. And this is a ridiculous price for a drive this large.