Hard drive prices are rising as demand increases. In January, Tom’s Hardware reported, according to ComputerBase, that prices had increased 46 percent, almost triple, over the previous four months. Even though they have fallen a bit since then, SSDs remain expensive. Popular storage provider Sandisk has a plan to help you. Soon it will launch two SATA drives, the Sandisk 320 and Sandisk 520, with the express goal of making storage more accessible than M.2 NVMe SSDs. However, the new Sandisk SATA drives will sacrifice a bit of performance for price and availability because they use older technology.
If you didn’t already know, there are four main types of hard drives, including SATA and NVMe. SATA is used in both physical hard drives and modern SSDs. SATA SSDs use a Serial ATA bus connection, which is limited compared to NVMe. SATA SSDs can reach write speeds of 550 MB/s, which is 10 to 15 times faster than traditional drives. NVMe uses the PCIe bus and PCIe 5.0 – the current version – can reach theoretical speeds of up to 64,000 MB/s on 32 lanes. It’s much, much faster.
Sandisk’s new drives will be an alternative to NVMe. The Sandisk 320’s capacities start at 250 GB and go up to 2 TB, while the Sandisk 520 start at 500 GB and go up to 4 TB. Sandisk hasn’t announced prices yet, but given the promise of making them accessible, they should be close to market value. You can currently find a 250GB SATA SSD for around $50. A Dutch retailer reportedly said the launch date for the new discs would be early June, but nothing has been officially confirmed.
How will this release save consumers on a budget?
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Given the high prices of NVMe SSDs and their limited availability, driven by growing demand from AI and data centers, consumers have fewer options to upgrade storage or simply replace failing drives. According to Tom’s Hardware, which tracks SSD prices, drives that once cost less than $200 are now much more expensive, sometimes quadrupling. It doesn’t matter if you add more storage for photos or games; Can you imagine dealing with a failed operating system disk?
Sandisk’s new SATA drives, the 320 and 520 series, should provide some relief if reasonably priced. Leaked Amazon listings indicate that they will be in a 2.5-inch form factor with a slim 7mm design, making them ideal for use in everything from desktops to ultra-thin laptops. The 320 is a good starting point for most, with sequential read speeds of up to 545MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 525MB/s. The 520 will be aimed at professionals, content creators, and those who need a little more performance, with sequential read speeds of 560MB/s and sequential write speeds of 525MB/s. There is currently no mention of the controller or NAND used inside the drives.
Essentially, this will provide a decent replacement for extra storage in a pinch. If your drives fail or you need to scale and don’t mind sacrificing NVMe-level speeds, Sandisk’s new options will do the job just fine. If you need something immediately, standard hard drives are still worth buying in 2026, especially for backup storage. Honestly, your old hard drives are valuable and would be worth using or selling if you have old versions of them.
