SSDs are the Black Friday category with the biggest gap between the headline and the truth. The discounts are real and they are the deepest of any hardware an editor buys, but 2026 is a NAND shortage year: the list prices the discounts are measured against have been reset upward twice since spring, so a “40 percent off” banner can land at last month’s street price. This page is the watch list from our storage guides with the late-September price next to each drive and the price that would be a real cut. Every link goes to a listing sold by Amazon itself, or to the maker’s own Amazon storefront where that is the only source, because storage is where counterfeit and relabeled drives live. From November 20 through Cyber Monday every line gets re-checked on the live page and updated.
Last updated: October 2026. Some links below are affiliate links. Buy through them and it helps keep the site running, at no extra cost to you. Baseline prices were read on the live Amazon listings on September 28 and 29, 2026, with the seller noted per line. Deal prices land here the week of November 20. The broader list for every category is on the Black Friday deals for video editors page.
TLDR
Two prices to set an alert for. The Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB, the internal drive we put media on, was $389.99 in September; under $330 it is the best storage price of the year. The Samsung T9 2 TB, the portable drive that actually sustains its speed on a long copy, was $444.44; under $350 it is the buy. Samsung drives are the most reliably discounted storage on Amazon every November and the most reliably counterfeited, so the seller line on every one of these is the whole test.
Internal NVMe
The media drive: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB
September price: $389.99, sold by Amazon. Target: under $330. The 990 Pro is Gen 4, which is all a media drive needs, with the sustained write behavior that keeps a long offload from collapsing. The 4 TB version was a marketplace-only listing at $989.99 in September and is not a target until Amazon sells it again. What sits ten dollars above it decides the purchase, below.
The Gen 5 upsell: Samsung 9100 Pro 2 TB
September price: $399.99, sold by Amazon. Target: under $340. The 9100 Pro sat $10 above the 990 Pro in September, which is the entire argument of the 990 Pro vs 9100 Pro comparison: at that gap, buy Gen 5 if the board has the slot. In deal week the two move independently, so the rule is the gap, not the drive. Under $30 apart, the 9100 Pro; wider, the 990 Pro.
The value drive: Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2 TB
September price: $376.90, sold by Amazon. Target: under $300. The EVO Plus is the drive that made the NVMe trio comparison interesting: DRAM-less, slower on a full-drive write, and $13 cheaper than the 990 Pro in September, which was not enough. Under $300 it becomes the cache and project drive, and the 990 Pro stays the media drive.
The big drive: WD Black SN850X 4 TB and 8 TB
September price: $689.99 for the 4 TB; the 8 TB was $1,649.99 from a third-party seller on September 29, with no Amazon-sold offer. Target: 4 TB under $600; 8 TB only if Amazon sells it. At 4 TB the SN850X is the drive to buy, because Samsung’s 4 TB 990 Pro has left Amazon’s own stock, and WD’s Black line discounts hard in November. The 8 TB is the largest single M.2 an editor can put in a laptop, and it is worth waiting for a first-party listing rather than paying a marketplace premium for it.
Portable
The one to buy: Samsung T9 2 TB
September price: $444.44. Target: under $350. The T9 is the portable drive with a real cache, which is why it holds around 900 MB/s on a long transfer where the T7 line falls to a third of that, and the T7 vs T9 post has the numbers. September had the T9 2 TB priced under the slower T7 Shield 2 TB at $517.47, an inversion the shortage produced, so a Shield “deal” that lands above the T9’s price is not one.
The Thunderbolt 5 drive: OWC Envoy Ultra 2 TB
September price: $799.99, sold by OWC’s own Amazon storefront. Target: under $700. The Envoy Ultra is the portable that moves at internal-NVMe speed over Thunderbolt 5, for the editor with a TB5 Mac who offloads a day’s worth of 6K. OWC sets its own Amazon pricing and has announced its own October sale, so this line moves on OWC’s calendar rather than Amazon’s; the target holds for both.
Side by side
| Drive | September price | Buy at | Deal-week price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB | $389.99 (Amazon) | Under $330 | Checked from Nov 20 |
| Samsung 9100 Pro 2 TB | $399.99 (Amazon) | Under $340 | Checked from Nov 20 |
| Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2 TB | $376.90 (Amazon) | Under $300 | Checked from Nov 20 |
| WD Black SN850X 4 TB | $689.99 (Amazon) | Under $600 | Checked from Nov 20 |
| WD Black SN850X 8 TB | $1,649.99 (third party) | Amazon-sold only | Checked from Nov 20 |
| Samsung T9 2 TB | $444.44 (Amazon) | Under $350 | Checked from Nov 20 |
| Samsung T7 Shield 2 TB | $517.47 (Amazon) | Below the T9’s price | Checked from Nov 20 |
| OWC Envoy Ultra 2 TB | $799.99 (OWC on Amazon) | Under $700 | Checked from Nov 20 |
How to shop an SSD deal without getting burned
Amazon as the seller, or walk. Samsung SSDs are the most counterfeited storage product on the marketplace, and the fakes are good enough to pass a first format. Check the model suffix. Samsung sells the 990 Pro with and without a heatsink, the 990 EVO and the 990 EVO Plus, and the T7, T7 Shield and T7 Touch, and the cheaper sibling is always the one in the deal headline. Ignore the struck-through price; every drive here has had its list price raised this year, and a discount back to August’s street price is not a discount. And buy capacity, not speed: a 4 TB Gen 4 drive on sale beats a 2 TB Gen 5 drive at full price for editing every time, because the timeline never notices the interface and always notices a full drive.
FAQ
Are Black Friday SSD deals real in a shortage year?
Yes, on the popular capacities: Samsung and WD still use November to clear channel stock, and the 2 TB drives will move. The 4 TB and 8 TB tiers are where the shortage bites and where a deal is least likely; buy those when the target hits, not on the day.
Should I buy a Gen 5 drive on sale or a Gen 4 drive?
For media, Gen 4. For the cache and project drive on a Gen 5 board, Gen 5 if the gap is under $30. The drive roles guide explains which drive does which job.
Is a NAS or a DAS a better Black Friday storage buy than an SSD?
Different job. The SSDs here are working drives; the enclosures and NAS boxes on the main Black Friday page hold the archive. Most editors need one of each, and the NAS deals are usually deeper.
From November 20 this page gets a fresh look every morning; the full category list is on the Black Friday deals for video editors page, and the older but still useful shortlist is five SSDs to speed up your editing.
