Shuckable hard drive prices, ranked by $/TB.
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.
Compare shuckable drives
Lowest $/TB first. Each button opens the live Amazon listing.
| Rank | Product | TB | $/TB | 90 days | Amazon | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WD Elements · 16TB Lowest price we have tracked | 16 | unit price$31.25per TB, good value | 90-day price | Amazon $499.99 seen View on Amazon | |
| 2 | Seagate Expansion Desktop · 20TB | 20 | unit price$32.80per TB, good value | 90-day price | Amazon $655.99 seen View on Amazon | |
| 3 | Seagate Expansion Desktop · 22TB | 22 | unit price$39.54per TB, typical price | 90-day price | Amazon $869.91 seen View on Amazon | |
| 4 | WD Elements · 18TB | 18 | unit price$39.72per TB, typical price | 90-day price | Amazon $715.00 seen View on Amazon | |
| 5 | WD My Book · 16TB Lowest price we have tracked | 16 | unit price$41.25per TB, expensive | 90-day price | Amazon $659.99 seen View on Amazon | |
| 6 | WD Elements · 20TB | 20 | unit price$41.50per TB, expensive | 90-day price | Amazon $829.99 seen View on Amazon | |
| 7 | WD My Book · 14TB | 14 | unit price$42.84per TB, expensive | 90-day price | Amazon $599.75 seen View on Amazon | |
| 8 | WD My Book · 12TB | 12 | unit price$43.12per TB, expensive | 90-day price | Amazon $517.40 seen View on Amazon | |
| 9 | WD My Book · 18TB | 18 | unit price$43.33per TB, expensive | 90-day price | Amazon $780.00 seen View on Amazon | |
| 10 | WD Elements · 14TB | 14 | unit price$49.99per TB, very expensive | 90-day price | Amazon $699.90 seen View on Amazon | |
| 11 | WD Elements · 24TB | 24 | unit price$52.85per TB, very expensive | 90-day price | Amazon $1268.30 seen View on Amazon | |
| Seagate Expansion Desktop · 12TB | 12 | unit price—no current price | Amazon live price at Amazon See price on Amazon | |||
| Seagate Expansion Desktop · 16TB | 16 | unit price—no current price | Amazon live price at Amazon See price on Amazon | |||
| WD Elements · 12TB | 12 | unit price—no current price | Amazon live price at Amazon See price on Amazon | |||
| WD Elements · 22TB | 22 | unit price—no current price | Amazon live price at Amazon See price on Amazon |
Prices checked Nov 3, 6:08 PM CT. Anything older than 24 hours is hidden, and the retailer's page always has the live price.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The retailer 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.
Price moves this week
- ↓25.4%WD Elements 16TBat Amazontyp. $669.99 → $499.99
- ↓4.8%WD My Book 14TBat Amazontyp. $629.75 → $599.75
Or skip the shuck: recertified enterprise drives
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 | Listing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC550 · 18TB SATA | 18 | SATA | unit price$28.28per TB, good value | $509.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC550 · 18TB SATA | 18 | SATA | unit price$28.83per TB, good value | $519.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC550 · 18TB SATA | 18 | SATA | unit price$28.83per TB, good value | $519.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC550 · 16TB SATA | 16 | SATA | unit price$29.31per TB, good value | $469.00 | View listing |
| SeagateExos X22 · 22TB SATA | 22 | SATA | unit price$30.41per TB, good value | $669.00 | View listing |
| SeagateExos · 26TB SATA | 26 | SATA | unit price$30.73per TB, good value | $799.00 | View listing |
| SeagateExos · 26TB SATA | 26 | SATA | unit price$30.73per TB, good value | $799.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC580 · 24TB SATA | 24 | SATA | unit price$31.21per TB, good value | $749.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC590 · 24TB SATA | 24 | SATA | unit price$31.21per TB, good value | $749.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC560 · 20TB SATA | 20 | SATA | unit price$31.45per TB, good value | $629.00 | View listing |
| SeagateExos · 28TB SATA | 28 | SATA | unit price$32.11per TB, good value | $899.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar HC550 · 18TB SAS | 18 | SAS | unit price$32.17per TB, good value | $579.00 | View listing |
| SeagateExos · 28TB SATA | 28 | SATA | unit price$32.50per TB, good value | $910.00 | View listing |
| SeagateExos X18 · 18TB SAS | 18 | SAS | unit price$32.72per TB, good value | $589.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC570 · 22TB SATA | 22 | SATA | unit price$32.95per TB, good value | $725.00 | View listing |
| Western DigitalUltrastar DC HC580 · 24TB SATA | 24 | SATA | unit price$33.29per TB, typical price | $799.00 | View listing |
Bare-drive listings and prices read from ServerPartDeals Nov 3, 2026, 6:17 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.
How this works
Daily check
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.
$/TB, not raw price
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.
Honest staleness
Each price shows when we last saw it. We never display a number older than 24 hours as if it were current — past that, you get a button straight to the retailer's live price instead.
Why shuck an external drive?
"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.
Drive shucking guides
- How to shuck a hard drive The complete step-by-step — tools, the process, the 3.3V pin fix, CMR vs SMR, and testing the drive after.
- WD Elements Desktop The classic Amazon shuck — white-label CMR at 12 TB+. What's inside, the 3.3V pin fix, prices by capacity.
- Seagate Expansion Desktop The budget shuck. CMR at the larger sizes, which capacities to avoid, and live prices.
- WD My Book Same drives as Elements, plus a hardware-encryption catch. How to shuck it cleanly.
View all guides: $/TB buying guide, best by capacity, NAS and Plex, CMR vs SMR, WD vs Seagate.