The best cheap hard drive deals in May 2018

With the rise in popularity of SSDs, many people have started to write off traditional hard drives. That’s a mistake. The best hard drives offer huge amounts of storage at prices that SSDs just can’t match. If you have a giant library of music, video, or even photos, it’s a good idea to look at a traditional hard drive for all of your archival needs.

No matter what you need the storage for, nobody wants to pay full price for what is essentially old technology, no matter how useful it is. As with any type of PC hardware, the MSRP, or manufacturer’s suggested retail price is more of a guideline than any kind of firm rule. With hard drives, you’ll often find these storage devices at discounts for massive savings.

Luckily, we here at TechRadar have combed through hundreds of deals across the internet to find best hard drive deals so you won’t miss the greatest sales.

Best hard drive deals

Seagate scores the spot for the best hard drive deal, with their BarraCuda drives that strike that perfect balance between storage, speed and price. The 3TB drives in this lineup are an especially great deal, as they really hit that sweet spot between high density storage and a sweet 7,200RPM spin rate. And they do this while maintaining a price that’s significantly lower than their direct competition.

So if you’re looking for a drive for light archiving, or a main drive and you don’t want to take the plunge on an SSD, the BarraCuda will be a great choice, as it can reach read speeds of up to 190 MB/s which is more than enough for day-to-day computing.

Best gaming hard drive deal

When it comes to gaming, the biggest priority is speed. Nobody wants to be playing their favorite PC games, only to encounter unbearable loading times. That’s where the WD VelociRaptor drives really shine. These slick drives offer a blistering 10,000 RPM, so that you’ll spend as little time as possible loading, and more time actually playing.

Better yet, they offer much better price-per-gigabyte than even budget SSDs, so if you’re looking to cut down on your downtime, you can do so while still saving a couple bucks.

Best hybrid hard drive deal

Hybrid drives combine the best aspects of both SSDs (solid state drives) and hard drives, and allow you have high storage density while also having the speed of an SSD for the data you use the most. The Seagate FireCuda desktop drives take this formula and perfect it by including 2TB of data with 8GB of smart flash memory. That might seem like a small complement of SSD space, but it learns and store which files and applications you use the most, helping you access it faster than a standard HDD.

And now, with the rising ubiquity of SSDs, there’s never been a better time to find a deal on the FireCuda – as along with other SSHDs, the prices are being cut constantly.

Best laptop hard drive deal

These days, it’s becoming more and more common for laptops to be built with SSDs. While this is great if you’re not necessarily looking for high amounts of storage, anyone who needs a lot of space to work is going to be stuck paying an extremely high premium. Luckily, the HGST Travelstar solves this issue by offering 1TB of storage with a 7,200 RPM spin rate at a very modest price.

Coming in 750GB and 1TB varieties, the Travelstar is a great deal for anyone who is looking for a great hard drive in their laptop.

Best external hard drive deal

Do you travel for work or school a lot? Well, if so, the WD Elements line of external drives might just be perfect for you. Not only do these drives offer a great price-per-gigabyte level, but they’re small enough to carry along with you without breaking a sweat.

Not only does the WD Elements line offer high storage and high portability, but they also undercut the price of the competition, making it a great purchase for anyone who needs to carry their work with them.