External Hard Drive Prices Doubled: Cheaper Backup Options -

Quick answer: External hard drives cost far more than they did a year ago, so buy only the capacity you need, and combine one drive with a cloud plan instead of buying two drives. A sensible low-cost setup is a single external drive for a full copy, plus an online service for your most important folders. As of October 2026, one US price check found a 24TB Seagate drive going from $279.99 to $649.41 in nine months.

Backup gear has quietly become expensive. The same AI data-center demand that’s pushing up laptop prices is also absorbing hard drives and flash storage, and ordinary buyers are paying for it.

This article explains what happened, then walks through cheaper ways to protect your files. It’s one of our Computing guides, and it pairs with our piece on why laptop prices are rising.

How much have external hard drive prices risen?

TheFPSReview compared prices on 1 September 2026 and found a Seagate 24TB external drive at $649.41 on Amazon (with a 10% discount applied), against $279.99 at Best Buy in January. A Western Digital 18TB external was $794.99. The site noted that an 8TB model now costs about what the 24TB one did earlier in the year. (TheFPSReview)

That’s a single retailer snapshot and US-only, so treat the exact numbers as an example, not a rule. The direction is consistent with other reporting. In February, Western Digital’s CEO said the company was “pretty much sold out for calendar year 2026,” with most of its business now serving cloud customers. (PCWorld)

TrendForce’s 24 September outlook says NAND flash prices are still climbing in the fourth quarter, so SSDs aren’t a cheap way out either. (TrendForce)

What’s the cheapest sensible backup plan now?

The classic advice is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two kinds of storage, with one copy somewhere else. You don’t need an expensive version of it. For most households, this works:

Copy one: the files on your laptop.
Copy two: one external drive, sized to what you actually have.
Copy three: a cloud service holding the folders you can’t replace, such as photos and documents.

Cloud services bill monthly or yearly, so you avoid a big upfront cost. Apple lists iCloud+ at $0.99 a month for 50GB, $2.99 for 200GB and $9.99 for 2TB in the US, and £0.99 for 50GB in the UK. (Apple Support) Microsoft 365 Basic is $19.99 a year for 100GB, and Microsoft 365 Personal is $99.99 a year for 1TB. (Microsoft) Prices vary by country, so check your local store before buying.

How big a drive do you need?

Check how much space your files use, not how big your laptop’s drive is. Apple says a Time Machine disk should have at least twice your Mac’s storage capacity. (Apple Support) That’s a safe rule for Windows too, though if you back up only your documents and photos, a smaller drive does the job.

Option	Upfront cost	Good for	Weak spot
External hard drive	High right now	Full copy of everything	Can fail or be lost with the laptop
Cloud subscription	Low	Photos and key documents	Ongoing fee, slower to restore large amounts
Second laptop or spare PC	None if you own one	An extra copy	Needs manual setup

Which files should you protect first?

Start with what you can’t get back: family photos and videos, tax and legal paperwork, school or work documents, and anything you created yourself. Apps and the operating system can be reinstalled, so they don’t need the same space.

Sorting files this way often shrinks the backup a lot. A person with 150GB of irreplaceable files doesn’t need a multi-terabyte drive, and that saves real money while prices are high. Delete duplicates and old downloads before you copy anything.

How do you back up on Windows 11 and Mac?

On Windows 11

Select Start, search for “Windows Backup” and open it.
Use the Folders dropdown to choose Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Videos and Music.
Sign in with your Microsoft account if asked. Backups go to OneDrive.

Microsoft notes the free tier is 5GB, so larger libraries need a paid plan. (Microsoft) If you’d rather not pay, copy folders to an external drive using File History or drag and drop.

On a Mac

Plug in an external drive.
Open System Settings, then General, then Time Machine.
Select Add Backup Disk, choose your drive and click Set Up Disk.

Time Machine then keeps hourly backups for 24 hours, daily backups for a month and weekly backups after that. (Apple Support)

Where should you keep the drive?

Keep the external drive somewhere other than your laptop bag, ideally in another room. If a fire, theft or spilled drink takes out your laptop, you don’t want your backup to go with it. If you can, keep a second copy of your most precious photos with a relative or in cloud storage.

Also test your backup. Pick a file, restore it to a different folder and open it. A backup you’ve never tried to restore is a guess, not a safeguard. And if the drive you already own is showing its age, our guide on checking drive health explains how to find out before it fails.

Windows 11’s new OneDrive opt-out button

Windows 11 users have long been nagged to turn on OneDrive backup. In late August 2026, Windows Latest and TechSpot reported that a full-screen prompt now includes an “Opt out of backup” button on Windows 11 25H2, replacing the old “Remind me in 3 days” option. TechSpot says Microsoft hasn’t confirmed the rollout, and that choosing it doesn’t delete existing OneDrive files. (TechSpot)

Opting out of the prompt isn’t the same as having a backup. If you decline OneDrive, set up an external drive instead.

Frequently asked questions

Is it worth buying an external SSD instead of a hard drive?

Not for price. TrendForce expects flash storage costs to keep rising, so SSDs are unlikely to be a bargain right now. A hard drive is still usually cheaper per terabyte, even after the recent rises.

Is cloud backup safe enough to replace an external drive?

It can protect you from a lost or stolen laptop, but we’d still keep a local copy. Restoring several hundred gigabytes over the internet is slow, and an account problem could lock you out.

Should I wait for external drive prices to fall?

Not if you have no backup. Losing your photos costs more than any drive. If you already have a backup, waiting is reasonable, but no analyst we found predicts relief this year.

How often should I back up?

Automatically, ideally. Time Machine and Windows Backup both run on a schedule once set up, so you only need to check them occasionally.

External Hard Drive Prices Doubled: Cheaper Backup Options