There’s a Wild Sale on Western Digital External Hard Drives

When it comes to big, meaty storage devices, hard drives still reign supreme. Solid state’s speed and greater resistance to rough handling is wonderful and all, but when it comes to storing terabytes of 4K videos, RAW photographs, and such, the only real affordable alternative for those of us who don’t shit gold bricks is a hard drive.

The dollar per gigabyte ratio is just leagues better. I’ve been using Western Digital Elements external hard drives for years without a failure (knock on wood). They’re reliable, widely available, and available in some truly mind-bogglingly huge capacities. Who’d have thought the price of a 24TB drive would ever come down to Earth?

There are a bunch of Western Digital Elements external hard drives on sale right now. These are the ones that are worth and those that aren’t. I’ve even highlighted the overall best deal. Hint: it’s the 14TB one.

lots of options and one stand-out

Looking at the history of sale, retail, and actual selling prices on the Western Digital Elements across multiple retailers, the reality is more nuanced. Whether it’s on a real sale, a fake sale, or a particularly great sale depends on the storage capacity, which increases in 1TB increments from 2TB to 6TB and in 2TB increments from 6TB to 24TB, plus 1TB and 1.5TB versions.

Out of all the capacities for sale, I’ve chosen the 14TB as the best deal among them. The Western Digital Elements 14TB sells both at Walmart and on Amazon for $200, which itself is a great deal and matches its lowest-ever price, last seen in March 2022. And that’s $80 less than its usual selling price.

For even less, there’s a coupon applied during checkout at B&H Photo Video that brings the $380 retail price down to $185. That’s 14TB of storage. Even the working photographers and professional video editors I know could survive for a long time on a 14TB drive before using it up.

As for the bad deals among the Elements going on right now, it’s basically everything below 14TB. They’re either not on sale or they’re “on sale” for that price all the time. And forget the 10TB and 12TB versions. They’re more expensive than the 14TB. Above 14TB, the deals are good, just not quite as good.

And if you aren’t already backing up your files… Well, you shouldn’t be sleeping soundly at night until you do. That’s all I’m sayin’.