Smart Tags: How I Help You Find the Best Storage Deals
Smart Tags: How I Help You Find the Best Storage Deals
Shopping for storage can be overwhelming. With over 7,000 listings across Amazon and eBay, how do you find the right drive at the right price without spending hours scrolling?
That’s why I created tags. They surface the information that actually matters - shipping options, available discounts, and drive technology - so you can filter down to exactly what you need in seconds.
Amazon Tags
When browsing Amazon listings on PricePerGig, you’ll see these tags:
Prime
The Prime tag indicates the listing is eligible for Amazon Prime benefits - typically 2-day shipping and easy returns. If you’re a Prime member, filtering by this tag helps you find drives that ship fast without extra costs.
Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)
FBA means Amazon handles the storage, shipping, and returns - even if it’s sold by a third-party seller. This means faster delivery and Amazon’s customer service backing your purchase. Infact the main reason for adding this tag was just that, sometimes you just know a price is a little too good to be true, but, with an FBA item, you don’t mind because the returns are super simple and handled by Amazon, no endless loops of creating RMA tickets and contacting the sellers directly, just simple Amazon returns.
Free Shipping
Saves you from clicking into each listing to check shipping costs. You know it’s free before you even click, easy.
Sold by Amazon (SBA)
When Amazon is the actual seller, not just the fulfillment partner. Some buyers prefer this for extra peace of mind on high-value purchases, it was easy to add and often requested, so here it is!
eBay Tags
eBay listings have their own set of tags that help you find the best deals:
Coupon
This is a big one. I automatically detect eBay listings that have available coupons - genuine eBay promotional codes that apply at checkout. During sales events like Black Friday, this tag becomes incredibly valuable for finding real discounts. These are the coupons that show clealry in the listing, but during BF or Cyber Monday, you can really grab a bargain with these.
Read the full guide to finding eBay coupon deals
Browse coupon deals now:
Free Shipping
Same as Amazon - no shipping costs on these eBay listings.
Best Offer
The seller accepts negotiations. You might be able to get a better price than listed by making an offer. Worth trying on higher-value drives. Honestly, this was the main reason for adding eBay to PricePerGig.com, I love a bargain, and I don’t mind pinging a few cheeky offers out when I’m first looking, I’ve grabbed a few great deals with this myself.
Trusted Seller
These sellers have proven track records on eBay. I maintain a list of reliable sellers and tag their listings so you can shop with confidence. This list is up for debate, the current lists were created after much discussion with people on reddit. Feel free to use the feedback form and request more.
Technical Tags for Hard Drives
Beyond marketplace tags, I also tag hard drives by their recording technology. This matters more than most people realise.
CMR and SMR
CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) are different ways hard drives write data. The short version:
- CMR is better for NAS systems, RAID arrays, and workloads with lots of random writes
- SMR is fine for archival storage and sequential writes, often cheaper per gigabyte
If you’re building a NAS or running RAID, you want CMR drives. For backup drives you write to occasionally, SMR works fine and is often a little cheaper.
I’ve built a detailed tagging system to identify which drives use which technology, even when manufacturers don’t make it obvious.
Full technical breakdown: CMR, SMR and how I tag drives
How to Use Tags
Combining Tags
Tags work together with AND logic. If you select both Prime and CMR, you’ll see only drives that are both Prime-eligible AND use CMR technology.
This is powerful for narrowing down your options. Want a CMR drive with free shipping from a trusted eBay seller? Select those three tags, you’ll be down to a few hundred or just a 1000 or so listings in no time to search through.
Tags in URLs
Your tag selections appear in the URL, like /?tags=Prime,CMR or /ebay-us?tags=Coupon,FreeShipping.
This means you can:
- Bookmark your favourite filter combinations
- Share specific filtered searches with friends or communities
- Come back to exactly where you left off
Tag Visibility
You’ll only see tags that apply to the current marketplace. Amazon tags like Prime and SBA won’t appear when browsing eBay, and vice versa. Similarly, if no drives in the current view have a particular tag, that tag won’t be shown - no point filtering by something that doesn’t exist in your results.
Why This Matters
Every feature I add to PricePerGig is about saving you time and helping you make better decisions:
- Save time - No more manually scanning listings for shipping info
- Avoid surprises - Know about shipping costs and seller reliability upfront
- Make informed choices - Especially important for drive technology
- Find genuine deals - The Coupon tag surfaces real discounts, not marketing fluff
Tags are one of the things that makes PricePerGig more than just a price comparison site. I’m not just putting links in one place, I’m really trying to add value that helps you (and me) shop smarter.