Buying guides
Practical, no-nonsense guides to buying storage — how to compare drives, what the jargon means, and how to get the most capacity for your money.
SSD vs HDD: which should you buy?
The honest trade-off between solid state and spinning disks — speed, cost per terabyte, reliability and what to buy for each use case.
Understanding price per terabyte (£/TB)
Why £/TB is the only fair way to compare storage, and how to use it to spot genuinely good value.
Choosing hard drives for a NAS
What makes a NAS drive different, why it matters for always-on storage, and how to pick capacity.
How much storage do you actually need?
A quick, practical guide to sizing your next drive without overspending — or running out in a year.
NVMe vs SATA vs M.2: SSD interfaces explained
The jargon decoded: what NVMe, SATA and M.2 actually mean, how much speed difference you will notice, and which to buy.
SMR vs CMR hard drives: what to watch for
Shingled (SMR) drives are cheaper but can be painfully slow for the wrong job — here is how to tell them apart and when to avoid them.
Best storage for gaming
How much storage modern games really need, why NVMe matters for next-gen consoles, and the cheapest way to add space.
External vs internal drives
Portability and plug-and-play versus speed and value — how to choose between an external and an internal drive.
How long do drives last, and how to protect your data
Realistic lifespans for HDDs and SSDs, the warning signs of failure, and why every drive needs a backup.
Refurbished and renewed drives: worth the risk?
Used and renewed drives show the lowest £/TB of all — here is when the saving is worth the risk and what to check.
Hard drive failure rates: what 341,263 drives tell us
Backblaze runs over 341,000 drives and publishes every failure. Here is what the latest data actually says about which drives last.
Is Seagate really less reliable than WD?
The oldest argument in storage, checked against real numbers from a 341,000-drive fleet. The answer is not the one either camp expects.
Five SMART numbers that mean your drive is dying
Backblaze replaces a drive when any of five SMART attributes rises above zero. Here is what they are, and why a clean report is not the reassurance you think.
Drive conditions explained: New, Used, Renewed and Warehouse
What each Amazon condition means — New, Used, Renewed, Warehouse and recertified — plus FBA vs FBM, and how buying from a euro-zone Amazon store actually works.
How much does storage cost? UK prices per GB and per TB
What hard drives and SSDs really cost in the UK — price per gigabyte and per terabyte, why it varies, and how to spot a genuine deal.