Thread: Best Storage/Price ratio of external harddrives and thumbdrives?

I am looking for really cheap hard drives and flash drives that can hold a lot which are of decent quality (won't break/lose my data/etc.)

The cheapest hard drives I could find were 100 dollar 500 GB drives...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...pr_product_top (110)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...MWBC686WWPQ710 (98)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...MWBC686WWPQ710 (110)

The best thumb drive I could find was an 80 (60 after rebate) 16 GB thumb drive...
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-CMFUSB...986386&sr=8-12

Some other thumb drives were 40 dollar 8 gb, 20 dollar 4 gb, 10 dollar 2 gb. I'm looking for at least 4 GB, which is a lot of space for the type of stuff people put on thumbdrives (small videos, pictures, lots of documents). When I look at it, 4 GB would probably be enough for all my documents (homework and such), pictures, random files, and for some videos. But I am kind of leaning toward an 8 GB one just because I would be able to put more significant amounts of music and other stuff on it. They make 32 GB Flash drives, which are about twice as expensive as the 16 GB one (without rebate), and they also make 64 GB flash drives, but they are in the thousands for some reason. Of course I'm not going to get a 64 GB flash drive at that price, and of course I wouldn't get a flash drive for +100 bucks when I could easily get a small external hard drive.

Anyways, anyone have any suggestions, warnings, comments or anything?