Compare NVMe SSD, SATA SSD, and HDD prices with full price history charts. Find the lowest price per TB on Amazon UK and buy at the right time.
Browse NVMe SSDs, SATA SSDs, hard drives, external drives, and USB storage. Filter by brand, capacity, and interface — sorted by price per TB by default.
Fast, reliable storage is essential for quick boot times, fast game loading, and responsive file access. Modern PCs typically use a combination of NVMe SSDs for speed and HDDs for bulk storage.
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NVMe SSDs are the fastest option, reading at 3,500–7,000+ MB/s over PCIe. SATA SSDs max out around 550 MB/s but still feel snappy for everyday use. HDDs are cheapest per terabyte and ideal for mass storage of media files, backups, and games you play less often.
A 1TB NVMe SSD is the sweet spot for a boot drive — enough for Windows, key applications, and several large games. Add a 2–4TB HDD or second SSD if you store lots of video, photos, or have a big game library.
Gen 4 NVMe drives offer the best value right now, with real-world speeds that satisfy most users. Gen 5 drives are faster on paper but more expensive and run hotter. Gen 3 drives are still solid budget picks for secondary storage.
Check the TBW (terabytes written) rating for SSD longevity. For typical desktop use, even entry-level SSDs last years. Look for 5-year warranties as a sign of manufacturer confidence.
Higher-end SSDs include a dedicated DRAM cache chip that stores the mapping table for where data is located on the drive. This makes random read and write operations faster and more consistent, which benefits everyday tasks like booting and loading applications. Budget SSDs use Host Memory Buffer (HMB), borrowing a small portion of your system RAM instead. HMB drives perform well for light use, but DRAM-equipped drives hold up better under sustained or mixed workloads and tend to have longer lifespans.
If you are building a NAS, home server, or any always-on storage system, look for drives specifically rated for that use. NAS-rated HDDs are designed to handle vibration from multi-bay enclosures and have firmware optimised for RAID arrays. Enterprise SSDs offer higher endurance ratings and power-loss protection. Desktop drives used in a NAS environment may fail sooner and often void their warranty when used outside intended conditions. The price premium for NAS-rated drives is worthwhile for data you cannot afford to lose.
External SSDs have become fast enough to rival internal SATA drives, with USB 3.2 Gen 2 models reaching around 1,000 MB/s. They are ideal for transferring large files between machines, expanding console storage, or carrying a portable work environment. When choosing an external SSD, pay attention to the interface — USB-C with 10Gbps or 20Gbps support gives the best speeds. Rugged enclosures with IP ratings are worth considering if you travel frequently or work in demanding environments.
A common and effective storage strategy is to use a fast NVMe SSD as your boot drive for the operating system and frequently used applications, paired with a larger secondary drive for games and media. This keeps your system responsive without requiring an expensive high-capacity NVMe drive. Games installed on a SATA SSD still load quickly, and many titles see minimal difference between SATA and NVMe load times. Reserve your fastest storage for software that benefits from sequential read speeds, like video editors and virtual machines.
Both SSDs and HDDs report their health status through SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) data. Free tools can read these metrics and warn you when a drive is approaching failure. For SSDs, keep an eye on the percentage of life remaining and total data written. For HDDs, watch for reallocated sectors and pending sector counts. Replacing a drive proactively when SMART warns of degradation is far cheaper and less stressful than recovering data from a failed drive.
Fast storage pairs well with a powerful CPU and GPU for the best overall system performance.
