Whether you own a PC or laptop, PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, smartphone, or pretty much any other computer-based electronics out there, you're bound to benefit from additional storage. Amazon Prime Day is offering a wide selection of high capacity hard drives (both internal and external), blazing fast SSDs, and tiny flash memory cards at dizziyingly low prices. Many of these prices are the best we've seen, ever. These deals run now through July 13 midnight PST unless they sell out earlier, so don't hesitate.
Amazon Prime Day Hard Drive Deals
Even with the advent of SSDs, traditional disk-based hard drives are still widely used, primarily because the price is so much more attractive. An 18TB hard drive still costs less than a 4TB SSD. There are many instances where storage capacity and reliability are far more important than raw speed. NAS optimized drives can store away terabytes of data for years, even when run 24/7 in a server type environment. Performance optimized hard drives offer a nice boost of speed thanks to the faster RPM and bigger cache and still offer a good value per terabyte of storage. Portable hard drives are similar to SSDs in that they are smaller, more portable, and don't require additional power beyond the USB cable.
Amazon Prime Day SSD Deals
SSDs offer several benefits over traditional hard drives. They're significantly faster to the point where loading screens, bootup times, and file tranfers are measured in mere seconds instead of minutes. They have no moving parts for increased durability and they have lower power consumption. Their ideal use is as a boot drive or a drive that holds your regularly accessed applications. They are not a good drive for long-term low-use storage.
For those of you looking to upgrade your PS5 internal storage without compromising on speed, make sure to select one of the "PS5-compatible" SSDs. You'll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 SSD with a minimum 5,500MB/s read speed. A heatsink is also highly recommended. You could either get one without heatsink and add it yourself, which is very easy to do and only costs about $10 on Amazon, or you could buy one with one preinstalled.
Amazon Prime Day Memory Card Deals
Micro SDXC cards are used in most smartphones, cameras (including the GoPro), and portable gaming consoles like the Nintendo Switch and the Steam Deck. Even if your device requires a larger SDXC card, it's not hard to find a Micro SDXC to SDXC card adapter (sometimes they're even included in the packaging). A "U1" card has a minimum sustained write speed of 10MB/s and a "U3" card has a minimum sustained write speed of 30MB/s, An "A1" card has a minimum 1500 random read IOPS, 500 random write IOPS. "A2" requires a minimum of 4000 read and 2000 write IOPS.
Amazon Prime Day Gaming Drive Deals
Note that functionally, gaming drives are essentially fancy enclosures with slick aesthetics and fancy RGB LED lights that house a performance oriented hard drive (like the WD Black) instead of a slower hard drive you might find in a standard external hard drive. That usually means there's a bit of a price hike, but the deals today speak otherwise.
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