WD Elements, WD My Book and Seagate Expansion desktop drives — the cheapest enclosures to crack open for bare CMR drives inside your NAS, Plex server or DAS. Live Amazon prices, ranked by dollars per terabyte and refreshed daily — plus manufacturer-recertified bare enterprise drives if you'd rather skip the shuck.
Lower $/TB is better. Tap Check → for the retailer's live price.
| Product | TB | Lowest $/TB | 90 days | Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate Expansion Desktop | 16 | $36.15 | ||
| Seagate Expansion Desktop | 22 | $36.54 | ||
| WD Elements | 20 | $39.50 | ||
| WD Elements | 18 | $41.06 | ||
| WD Elements | 22 | $42.64 | ||
| WD My Book | 14 | $43.06 | ||
| WD Elements | 14 | $43.21 | ||
| WD My Book | 12 | $43.33 | ||
| WD Elements | 16 | $43.41 | ||
| WD Elements | 24 | $44.17 | ||
| WD My Book | 16 | $45.31 | ||
| Seagate Expansion Desktop | 12 | — | — | see live price Check → |
| Seagate Expansion Desktop | 20 | — | — | see live price Check → |
| WD Elements | 12 | — | — | see live price Check → |
| WD My Book | 18 | — | — | see live price Check → |
Snapshot aggregated Sep 17, 2026, 6:04 AM. Prices older than 24 hours are hidden — tap Check → for the live price.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Check → buttons are paid affiliate links, so we may earn a commission on a qualifying purchase at no extra cost to you. Prices and availability are accurate only as of the date/time shown and are subject to change; the price and availability on the retailer's own site at the time of purchase is the one that applies.
Bare 3.5″ enterprise drives listed as Manufacturer Recertified at ServerPartDeals — no enclosure to open, and often a lower $/TB than any new external. Condition and warranty are per the seller's listing; SAS drives need an HBA, so check the interface column.
| Drive | TB | Interface | $/TB | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC550Manufacturer Recertified | 18 | SATA | $27.17 | $489.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC580Manufacturer Recertified | 24 | SATA | $27.46 | $659.00 | View → |
| SeagateExos X20Manufacturer Recertified | 18 | SATA | $27.72 | $499.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalIU HA570Manufacturer Recertified | 24 | SATA | $27.88 | $669.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC580Manufacturer Recertified | 24 | SATA | $28.71 | $689.00 | View → |
| SeagateExosCMRManufacturer Recertified | 26 | SATA | $28.81 | $749.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC550Manufacturer Recertified | 18 | SATA | $28.83 | $519.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalUltrastar HC550Manufacturer Recertified | 18 | SAS | $28.83 | $519.00 | View → |
| SeagateExosManufacturer Recertified | 28 | SATA | $28.89 | $809.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC560Manufacturer Recertified | 20 | SATA | $28.95 | $579.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC580Manufacturer Recertified | 24 | SATA | $29.13 | $699.00 | View → |
| SeagateExosManufacturer Recertified | 26 | SATA | $29.19 | $759.00 | View → |
| SeagateExosCMRManufacturer Recertified | 28 | SATA | $29.25 | $819.00 | View → |
| SeagateExosManufacturer Recertified | 22 | SATA | $29.50 | $649.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC590Manufacturer Recertified | 24 | SATA | $29.54 | $709.00 | View → |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC550Manufacturer Recertified | 18 | SATA | $29.94 | $539.00 | View → |
Bare-drive listings and prices read from ServerPartDeals Sep 17, 2026, 6:15 AM. Condition shown is the seller's own listing label. These are plain links — DealBytes has no affiliate relationship with ServerPartDeals and earns nothing from them.
Amazon prices are read once per day in a real browser — the visible price and a timestamp, same as a human shopper would see. Recertified listings come from ServerPartDeals' own public product catalog, read on the same daily schedule.
A $189 12 TB and a $239 16 TB aren't directly comparable. We sort by price per terabyte so the actual best deal is obvious at a glance.
Each cell shows when we last saw that price. We never display a number older than 24 hours as if it were current — past that, you get a "Check →" link straight to the retailer's live price instead.
"Shucking" means buying an external USB hard drive and removing the plastic enclosure to use the bare 3.5" SATA drive inside. Manufacturers often price their retail desktop externals — WD Easystore, Seagate Expansion Desktop and similar — well below the bare internal drive of the same capacity, so the cheapest path to high-capacity storage is frequently to buy the external and crack it open.
Inside the larger-capacity WD and Seagate desktop enclosures you'll usually find a CMR (conventional magnetic recording) drive suitable for NAS and Plex use — the exact model varies by capacity and manufacture date. Because raw price hides the real value, this tracker ranks every drive by dollars per terabyte so the best deal is obvious at a glance.
Heads-up: shucking voids the enclosure warranty, and some WD drives use a 3.3V "PWDIS" pin (pin 3) that can stop the drive spinning up in certain power supplies until it's masked. Always confirm a drive fits your build before buying. See the methodology for how prices are gathered.
View all guides → $/TB buying guide · best by capacity · NAS & Plex · CMR vs SMR · WD vs Seagate