Price Trend: 750GB and 1TB Hard Drives

Published
When it comes to storage, bigger is always better. Fortunately, you're not limited to what came inside your PC. You can either upgrade your internal hard drive, which is easy if you know how, or add an external hard drive and avoid tinkering with your computer's innards.

Prices on both internal and external hard drives have tumbled in the past year, thanks in part to competition from solid-state memory. The current price for an external 750GB hard drive has now hit $150, a 50% drop from where prices were a year ago. Terabyte drives have also dipped in price: These monstruous hard drives can now be had for as little as $320, where they once retailed for shy of a grand. Lower capacity drives, however, have remained steady in price. So we compared recent price lows of 750GB drives with that of 1TB drives to see which drive offers the most bang for your buck.

Hard Drives
750GB Internal
750GB External
1TB Internal
1TB External *
Price Last Year
$300
$479
$320
$449
Current Price
$150
$150
$270
$199
Percentage Drop
50%
68%
15%
55%
Buy or Wait?
Buy!
Buy!
Hold
Buy!
  • *Includes dual 500GB models

Overall, external drives have seen the biggest price decrease. These USB- and FireWire-based drives often come with backup software, whereas their internal counterparts don't. In addition, 1TB internal drives are still rare and pricey, so if you're in need of extra storage space, it makes sense to buy as much as you can currently afford. As more systems with SSD options debut, we can only expect to see further HDD price cuts. We'll keep you in the loop on the latest deals.

Louis Ramirez is a dealnews Features Editor.

DealNews may be compensated by companies mentioned in this article. Please note that, although prices sometimes fluctuate or expire unexpectedly, all products and deals mentioned in this feature were available at the lowest total price we could find at the time of publication (unless otherwise specified).

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