'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?

ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. Embedded Ssds

When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.

November is here, marking the run up to the Holiday season and Black Friday, which has become one of the biggest shopping days of the year. This year Black Friday is on Friday 25th November but many retailers and product manufacturers are starting their Black Friday sales early, with significant savings available if you look in the right places.

Looking for the best Black Friday deals on tech? ZDNET is covering the sale event live and rounding up the biggest savings here.

ZDNET has rounded up its top picks for early storage and SSD deals ahead of Black Friday, featuring top brands you'll recognize including Samsung, SanDisk, WD, Intel and more which will allow you to backup and store photos, videos and other important data.

Below are the 10 best early storage and SSD deals we found could find. Further down the page, you'll see other interesting storage and SSD deals we spotted at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart.

A 2021 recipient of the Red Dot award, the Sandisk portable SSD is designed to withstand the toughest weather conditions while giving you the storage and transfer speeds you need - and easily connected to your laptop by USB.

Intel's next gen QLC NAND SSD with improved performance, storage, responsiveness and endurance with high-capacity - great for everyday computing, optimized productivity and gaming.

This external hard drive is a reliable storage solution for large files including videos and photos.  The USB 3.0 interface and backward-compatibility with USB 2.0 offer broad connectivity, while the automatic backup solution reduces the risk of data loss.

Tough, resilient and highly portable, the T7 shield isn't only compatible with PCs and laptops, but also smartphones, games consoles and even cameras. It also boasts rain, dust and crush resistance. 

A small, speedy flash drive with plenty of storage which can fit in the palm of your hand. Samsung boasts that it's it's waterproof, shock-proof, magnet-proof, temperature-proof, and X-ray-proof - so ideal for keeping a portable backup of those important files.

Store edited photos, videos, and games on this 3.5-inch Western Digital hard drive with a storage capacity of 4TB. It comes with a dynamic cache for optimizing allocation between reads and writes to enhance performance.

A USB flash drive from SanDisk which allows you to transfer files to and from your  Android smartphone and other devices. Easily transfer files between smartphones, tablets and computers with a high speed USB 3.1 performance of up to 150MB/s

This external hard drive from  WD provides users with up to 16TB of add-on storage for their photos, videos, music, documents, and other files. With plug-and-play simplicity and a high storage capacity inside a compact frame, it's the perfect tool for storing or backing up files.

Available in grey, red and blue, this 2TB portable SSD from Samsung is durability and offers fast transfer speeds even for large amounts of data - all inside a package which is small enough to fit inside your pocket. It's also equipped with shock resistance and thermal control in order to help your files safe from damage.

Built for multi-user environments and high workload rates, the Seagate IronWolf 16TB NAS Hard Drive is enhanced with for optimal reliability and system scalability to aid with data storage challenges - including enabling multiple users to upload, download and backup data. Big discounts on other capacity models are also available.

Here are some other storage and SSD Black Friday deals happening right now at Amazon:

Here are some other storage and SSD Black Friday deals happening right now at Walmart:

Here are some other storage and SSD Black Friday deals happening right now at Best Buy:

We searched for Black Friday storage and SSD deals across a range of vendors including SanDisk, Samsung and WD, as well as well-known retailers including Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart. We also used price trackers to ensure we could find the latest deals and ensure they're from legitimate retailers.

Black Friday 2022 is on Friday 25 November - the day after Thanksgiving. But deals aren't limited to that day and appear in the run up to and after Black Friday itself - we'll be tracking the best Black Friday deals for the entire period. 

Cyber Monday is the Monday after Thanksgiving and Black Friday - in 2022 it falls on Monday 28th November. 

Pcb Assembly ZDNET scoured Black Friday sales to find the best deals by category at different retailers: