Ps4 External Hard Drive Black Friday

Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deals 2021: early offers and what we expect

(Image credit: Future)

Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deals always present a fantastic opportunity to save on additional storage and usually make up some of the best Black Friday PS5 deals and PS5 Cyber Monday deals you can find. If you're tired of deleting PS4 games off your PS5's internal drive and like having a large selection of titles installed to play at a moment's notice, external hard drives deals tend to be in plentiful supply during the November sales.

What's more, unlike the PS5 itself – which remains frustratingly hard to find even though it's been on sale for almost a year – we usually see a broad range of stock and options when it comes to external hard drives, though some particularly enticing deals do get snapped up quickly.

We've still got a few more weeks to go until Black Friday 2021 rolls around, though, as the sales extravaganza officially begins on November 26. Once the sale gets underway, we'll be curating the very best PS5 external hard drive Black Friday deals right here, but we'll also make you aware of any early deals that may pop up.

Today's best PS5 external hard drive deals

If you don't want to wait for a Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deal, and you're in desperate need of some more PS5 storage, there are still some good deals to be had before the sales event takes place.

The selection below includes some of our favorites from our best external hard drives guide, which is full of expert recommendations and in-depth reviews. If you're struggling to decide which external hard drive to grab, there's plenty of guidance to help you pick the right one.

Our Black Friday predictions

PS5 Disc Edition — (Image credit: Mr.Mikla / Shutterstock)

While it might seem premature to start thinking about your Black Friday purchases, there's no doubt that the holiday spending spree grows more popular each year. According to data from Adobe, $9 billion online sales happened on Black Friday alone, and ecommerce sales between November and December reached an eye-watering $188 billion for the very first time.

With the PS5 now in the homes of over 10 million people, and demand still at fever pitch for Sony's new console, buying additional storage for the PS5 is bound to be a popular purchase come Black Friday. A recent firmware update also added the ability to store PS5 games on external hard drives (something which wasn't previously possible), making the idea of buying an external hard drive for PlayStation 5 even more of a no-brainer.

It's also important to note that unlike choosing the best SSD for PS5, which requires a very specific type of drive, picking an external hard drive is fairly straightforward. You simply need to take into account whether you want an external SSD or external hard drive and pick the capacity you need, be it 500GB, 1TB, or more. The higher the capacity, the more expensive your chosen drive will be – solid state drives are also more pricey than traditional hard drives, but they are faster and more reliable.

FAQs

PS5 six months on — (Image credit: Shutterstock/charnsitr)

When will the best Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deals start in 2021?

Black Friday falls on November 26 each year, but unlike some products, we tend to see external hard drive deals happen throughout the year. However, alongside Amazon Prime Day, we've found Black Friday to be one of the best times to pick up an external hard drive, especially when it comes to the amount of sheer choice available.

It's always worth keeping an eye out for any early deals, though the majority of the discounts – particularly on more popular and higher capacity models – do tend to fall around Black Friday, so don't worry if you choose to wait until then.

Where will the best Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deals be?

Which PS5 external hard drives will be discounted for Black Friday?

We're likely to see sizable discounts on SSD and HDD external drives, with the two most popular capacities being 500GB and 1TB. If you're hoping to significantly increase your PS5 storage, a HDD will be your best option, with drives of up to 4TB being available for as little as $109.99 / £89.99, while 1TB portable SSDs fell to around $200 / £150.

Reputable brands such as Seagate, Samsung, WD_Black and Western Digital will all likely have PS5 external hard drive deals come Black Friday, which means you can buy with confidence should you see an offer that takes your fancy.

Buying tips

What should I look for when buying a PS5 external hard drive?

Thankfully picking an PS5 external hard drive is super simple. You only need to bear a couple of things in mind, which we've listed below:

It must use SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps or later (we won't include any external drives that don't meet this requirement)
250GB minimum, 8TB maximum capacity
You can't connect an external drive though a USB hub
Two or more USB extended storage drives can't be connected at the same time, so don't bother buying multiple drives.

Note: You can store PS5 games and PS4 games on an external drive, but to play PS5 games you'll need to copy it over to your PlayStation 5's internal SSD storage. You can play PS4 games directly from an external drive, however.

What about Black Friday PS5 SSD deals?

If you're looking to upgrade your PlayStation 5's internal storage, we're also rounding up the best PS5 SSD Black Friday deals so you can make an awesome saving. The selection of drives will naturally be more limited, due to the need to meet Sony's specifications dictating what speed, size and type of NVMe SSD you can use with PS5.

What were last year's best Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deals?

A great way to get a sense of the type of Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deals we might see is to look at last year's offers. So what kind of discounts did we see? The good news is that a number of SSD external drives, which are more expensive than the traditional hard drives, were heavily discounted. However, if you really want to increase your storage capacity, standard external hard drives are the way to go as higher capacity SSDs are still very expensive.

Below, you'll find a roundup of last year's most enticing Black Friday PS5 external drive deals, which we've kept for comparison's sake. You can see the price, our thoughts on the deal at the time, and which retailers were a great source for external hard drive deals.

US: The best Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deals last year

UK: The best Black Friday PS5 external hard drive deals last year

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Adam is a Senior Gaming Writer at TechRadar. A law graduate with an exceptional track record in content creation and online engagement, Adam has penned scintillating copy for various technology sites and also established his very own award-nominated video games website. He's previously worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor and once played Halo 5: Guardians for over 51 hours for charity. (He's still recovering to this day.)