
If you're looking to significantly boost your local storage, the back-to-school season is an ideal time to act. I’ve shared several deals on high-capacity external drives lately, but this one stands out as the best offer yet. For a limited time, Best Buy is selling the Seagate Expansion 26TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive for $249.99 with free shipping—just $9.62 per terabyte. This is the first time this year a drive has dropped below $10 per TB.
### Seagate Expansion 26TB USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive
Original $349.99 save 29% $249.99 at Best Buy
The Seagate Expansion features a single 26TB drive, keeping its physical size comparable to other desktop hard drives. It includes a USB 3.0 interface—fast enough to avoid bottlenecking traditional hard drive performance—and comes with a USB 3.0 cable in the box. The drive also bundles recovery software and automatically recognizes both Windows and Mac systems.
While SSDs are trendy today, traditional hard drives remain the top choice for long-term storage. For starters, they’re far more affordable. At just $9.62 per TB, this drive is drastically cheaper than SSDs, which typically cost at least $60 per TB. Hard drives also offer much greater maximum capacity; consumer SSDs max out around 8TB, making the 26TB capacity of this drive far more impressive. Most importantly, while SSDs can match HDDs in lifespan, recovering data from a failed HDD is significantly easier than from an SSD.
Looking for more options? Explore the best external hard drives of 2025.
IGN’s deals team brings over 30 years of combined experience uncovering the best deals in gaming, tech, and beyond. We don’t mislead readers into buying unnecessary items at inflated prices. Our mission is to highlight the most valuable deals from trusted brands—ones our editorial team has personally tested. Learn more about our standards here, or follow the latest finds on IGN’s Deals account on Twitter.