I’ve posted a few deals on high-capacity local storage recently, but this is probably the best deal yet. As part of its Labor Day Sale, Best Buy is offering a massive Seagate Expansion 26TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive for $249.99 shipped, which averages out to $9.62 per TB. This is the only drive I’ve seen so far this year that is priced at under $10 per TB.
Seagate 26TB External Hard Drive for $249.99
The Seagate Expansion boasts a single 26TB disk drive so it’s physically no bigger than any other desktop hard drive. It features a USB 3.0 interface, which won’t bottleneck traditional hard drive speeds, and a USB 3.0 cable is included in the packaging. It also includes recovery software and automatic recognition of both Windows and Mac computers.
Although SSDs are all the rage these days, traditional hard drives are still the superior choice for long term storage. For one, hard drives are significantly less expensive. Compared to this hard drive’s $9.262/TB cost, a solid state drive would run you at least $60/TB. Hard drives also have a much higher maximum capacity. Consumer SSDs generally cap out at 8TB, which pales in comparison to the 26TB capacity of this drive. Perhaps most importantly, although SSDs can equal HDDs in terms of lifespan, it’s much easier to recover data from a HDD than SSD if either one fails.
Looking for more alternatives? Check out the best external hard drives of 2025.
Why Should You Trust IGN’s Deals Team?
IGN’s deals team has a combined 30+ years of experience finding the best discounts in gaming, tech, and just about every other category. We don’t try to trick our readers into buying things they don’t need at prices that aren’t worth buying something at. Our ultimate goal is to surface the best possible deals from brands we trust and our editorial team has personal experience with. You can check out our deals standards here for more information on our process, or keep up with the latest deals we find on IGN’s Deals account on Twitter.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
