A 4TB SSD Under $200, Anyone? I Found 3 Killer SSD Deals Worth Snagging Before Black Friday

Buying a cheap SSD is equal parts a math problem and an art: Is the cost per gigabyte competitive? Is the drive the right bus type (SATA or PCI Express), form factor (2.5-inch or M.2), and speed (nothing but question marks, that)? The best deal on an SSD is no deal at all if it doesn’t fit or work in your PC, or if you’ll overpay for speed potential that your system can’t realize. I’ve been covering the world of PC storage since 1993—in that time, I’ve edited or written more than a thousand storage reviews across a bunch of websites and in magazines. I’ve watched platter hard drives give way slowly, then all at once, to solid state drives, or SSDs. That makes me a pretty good judge of the Early Black Friday Deals on SSDs.

Seeking an SSD on Black Friday: Three Kinds of Bargains

Our guide to the best M.2 SSDs demystifies the many facets of modern SSDs that you need to understand to buy a drive that will work as a new boot drive or added storage for your desktop or laptop. But even knowing all the lingo and nuances of SSDs gets you only part of the way to deal discernment.

Scouring the pack of deals on offer from the major retailers, to that end, I’ve selected the best SSD deals I’ve seen in three main categories:

Almost all desktops and some rather aged laptops can take a 2.5-inch SATA SSD; for desktops, you merely need a SATA-III motherboard port and an open 2.5-inch bay. Those, though, are showing the least impressive deals so far for Black Friday.

Where the deal action is at this year is most definitely with PCI Express-bus M.2 drives, the gumstick-size drives that now dominate the SSD field. M.2 drives are broadly found in recent desktops and many laptops (those that don’t have their storage drive soldered down to the motherboard), but the nuances of bus types, NVMe speeds, and drive lengths warrant a crash course in drive lingo.

External SSDs, meanwhile, generally support a flavor of USB or, more rarely, Thunderbolt, and require less thought about compatibility so long as you have a matching interface. There, it’s more about getting the terabytes you need at a price you’re happy with.

Among our selections below, each one is a bargain in its own right and rates its own category. All you need to do is figure out which one is the best fit for the storage bind you find yourself in.

Based on our observations in 2025, it’s unlikely that we’ll see huge Black Friday discounts on Serial ATA 2.5-inch SSDs anymore; these are now becoming legacy upgrades that are increasingly becoming niche items as M.2 SSDs take over. That said, this under-$200 Crucial drive is a very decent upgrade for an older laptop you’re trying to rehabilitate that still uses a 2.5-inch hard drive. It’s also a fine deal for a desktop PC that can take a 2.5-inch SATA drive but not an M.2. It won’t be as fast as a PCI Express M.2 SSD, but it’ll blow away any platter hard drive, and it’s easy to install if you have an open bay for it.

If you’re replacing a 2.5-inch hard drive in an old laptop, an SSD like this will do it a world of good in terms of boot times and program launches. (You don’t have to go all-in on 4TB, either; 1TB models are around $70 from Best Buy.) It’s not especially easy to find name-brand 4TB-capacity SSDs of any kind for under $200 (a few have come and gone already pre-Black Friday, in our sales hunts), but this Crucial one stands out for its long-standing presence on the market (we reviewed a 480GB version of the BX500 back in 2019!), its three-year warranty, and the eye-poppingly low cost per gigabyte. This is the dictionary definition of “good value mass storage.”

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High capacity, high speed: This particular deal on the Samsung 9100 Pro ticks both boxes. (And it ticks the “bargain” one, too, of course.)

This 80mm-long M.2 NVMe SSD supports the PCI Express 5.0 bus, making it a great match for a late-model desktop or a PC build you may be planning in your latest dream-rig spreadsheet. You’ll need an up-to-the-minute motherboard with specific M.2 PCI Express 5.0 support (not all recent boards have it) to leverage the full speed of this scorcher of a drive. But if you can support it, it will make you very happy, with its roomy capacity, 14,000MB-per-second peak speeds, and five-year warranty.

The deal here is on the roomy 4TB model, which we bet will serve as a superb new boot drive or as the most luxurious video scratch drive or game storage drive you’ll ever own. Just a few things to know: A desktop motherboard may have multiple M.2 slots, and only some may support PCI Express 5.0. Be sure this drive will have an open slot before you buy. Also, know that few modern laptops support PCI Express 5.0 quite yet; they’ll dial down to version 4.0 speeds if you install this drive. This is mostly a desktop dreamer’s deal.

Crucial’s a division of memory giant Micron, so this deal is a step above external drives from SSD makers who are not also memory-chip manufacturers. The sleek little X9 is a perfect fit for general-use mass storage at an aggressive price for a 2TB drive. Crucial’s “Pro” version of the X9 features an aluminum case and a measure of ruggedization, whereas this non-Pro model is the more basic, plastic-cased version of the drive, meant for less rough-and-tumble use. (It still has a measure of shock- and drop-proofing, however.) It employs a basic USB-C 3.2 interface, supporting speeds of up to 1,050MB per second, and is compatible with Windows PCs, Macs, gaming consoles, and Android devices.

Check out our in-depth coverage of all the Early Black Friday deals, steals, sales, and discounts that we’ve found so far!

FAQs

Which Brand of SSD Is the Most Reliable?

It’s impossible to pinpoint a single brand as more reliable than another; SSD makers employ a variety of grades and types of flash memory to hit specific price points. That said, the length of the drive’s warranty tends to reflect a drive’s rated “write life.”

SSDs’ memory cells have a finite lifespan in terms of the number of times they can be written. In many cases, the warranty ends when the specified number of years is up, or when the drive reaches its TBW (terabytes written) rating. The longer the TBW for a given capacity, the more “write durable” the vendor deems the drive to be. Also look for ruggedized drives, which can forestall an early drive death due to a drop or an unexpected dunking.

Are SSDs Actually at Their Cheapest on Black Friday or Later?

Black Friday is often one of the best times to find a deal on an SSD all year long. Having covered a series of Amazon Prime Days and other “shopping events,” we don’t typically see many SSDs drop much lower than they do during the Black Friday period. Indeed, you may see some drives on sale throughout the year, but you’ll see a much bigger variety on sale at one time during Black Friday than during other times. If you want to have more choice, this is one of the best times of year to jump in.

About Our Expert

John Burek

Executive Editor and PC Labs Director

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Experience

I have been a technology journalist for almost 30 years and have covered just about every kind of computer gear—from the 386SX to 64-core processors—in my long tenure as an editor, a writer, and an advice columnist. For almost a quarter-century, I worked on the seminal, gigantic Computer Shopper magazine (and later, its digital counterpart), aka the phone book for PC buyers, and the nemesis of every postal delivery person. I was Computer Shopper’s editor in chief for its final nine years, after which much of its digital content was folded into PCMag.com. I also served, briefly, as the editor in chief of the well-known hard-core tech site Tom’s Hardware.

During that time, I’ve built and torn down enough desktop PCs to equip a city block’s worth of internet cafes. Under race conditions, I’ve built PCs from bare-board to bootup in under 5 minutes. I never met a screwdriver I didn’t like.

I was also a copy chief and a fact checker early in my career. (Editing and polishing technical content to make it palatable for consumer audiences is my forte.) I also worked as an editor of scholarly science books, and as an editor of “Dummies”-style computer guidebooks for Brady Books (now, BradyGames). I’m a lifetime New Yorker, a graduate of New York University’s journalism program, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

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