If you want the biggest and highest-capacity external hard drive, Cyber Monday is the time to buy.
I have a personal recommendation on a Thunderbolt enclosure that fits four full-size hard drives or SSDs, so you can get the fastest storage in enormous capacities. I’ve used the OWC ThunderBay 4 for about a year (having purchased the hard drive last Black Friday, coincidentally enough) and it’s served me well for all my odd purposes.
Here’s how to get the fastest, biggest external storage this shopping season.
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My favorite external hard drive setup on Black Friday
This rock-solid enclosure is great for massive video and photo libraries, Time Machine backups, or as a foolproof RAID array. Supports up to 96TB of storage -- yes, that's terabytes --- and is super easy to set up and upgrade. Never run out of storage again.
- Super high-speed Thunderbolt connectivity
- Solid metal construction
- Simple setup
- Bring your own drives
The OWC ThunderBay 4 offers incredibly capable external storage for Mac users, with full Thunderbolt connectivity. That unlocks real-world transfer speeds over 1,500MB/s, an enormous storage capacity of 96TB and the ability to daisy-chain other Thunderbolt accessories like a display.
If you pay close attention to Apple announcements, you may be aware that the new M4-based Macs are capable of next-generation Thunderbolt 5 — but there don’t appear to be any storage solutions like this on the market yet. For the time being, the ThunderBay 4 is still the best you can get.
For the best value, get the option that doesn’t include any built-in storage, which is on sale from its usual $449 down to $399. You can take advantage of other deals on storage and install the hard drives yourself. That’s what I did; it’s totally foolproof. You just unlock the door on the front and slide the disks into their perfectly sized slots.
Buy from: Amazon
Cheap high-capacity hard drives
This drive is a solid pick balancing high capacity and low price with name-brand reliability. Buy just one, or build out a RAID array from four or even more.
- High capacity storage
- Fast speeds
- Spinning disk, not solid-state
- Needs an enclosure
For the storage, I bought four 8TB hard drives from Seagate, a reputable brand. This gave me an incredible 32TB of storage. These drives are on sale for $110 each.
Using macOS Disk Utility, you can merge these four drives as one single disk in a RAID array. From there, you can create separate volumes — one for Time Machine, one for storage.
You can set up the RAID array using the full 32TB capacity. Or, for redundancy and safety, you can use 16TB and have a backup for safety.
Buy from: Amazon
What can you use it for?
All in all, you’ll have a massive external hard drive thanks to Cyber Monday. What do I use it for myself?
- Time Machine backups of my Mac mini, on a separate volume.
- Hosting a Plex library of TV shows and movies for streaming from my Apple TV or iPhone. It’s like setting up your own bespoke streaming service with your home computer as a server.
- Keeping a giant video archive of Apple keynotes and advertisements, useful for my research and work.
- Storing a complete second copy of my entire photo library.
- Backing up the hard drives of all the old computers in my collection, an ongoing project.
The possibilities are endless when you have 32TB of storage.
More Cyber Monday Apple deals:
- All Apple deals: Apple Cyber Monday deals: iPads, AirPods, Apple Watch and more
- AirPods Pro 2: Price alert: AirPods Pro 2 price drops to just $153.99, lowest ever
- Beats headphones: Best Cyber Monday deals on Beats headphones and earbuds
- Apple Watch: New all-time low prices on Apple Watch for Cyber Monday
- iPad: Get all-time low prices on iPads for Cyber Monday [Price drops!]
- iPad mini: Cyber Monday low-price alert: Get $99 off iPad mini 7
- Mac: Nab these Cyber Monday deals on M4 Macs and more [Updated: Price drops!]
- HomePod: Save on HomePod 2 and HomePod mini speakers for Cyber Monday
- AirTags: Get 4 AirTags for less than $19 each with this Cyber Monday deal
- Apple Pencil: Grab Cyber Monday deals on the brilliant Apple Pencil
- Monitors: Score $300 off Studio Displays plus other Cyber Monday monitor deals
- Windows software: CdkeySales’ Black Friday Sale starts as Windows 12 rumors swirl
Our favorite Cyber Monday Deals on gear we love:
- MacBook Air: The MacBook Air I love is on sale for Cyber Monday
- M4 MacBook Pro: Why you should nab this killer Cyber Monday deal on M4 Pro MacBook Pro
- Beats headphones: My go-to Beats headphones are a Cyber Monday steal [Setups]
- iPad Pro: My favorite iPad is down to its lowest price this Cyber Monday
- Portable SSD: A portable SSD I love is on sale for Cyber Monday
- RAID drive: My favorite external storage setup, on sale this Cyber Monday
