Daily check
Each product page is loaded once per day in a real browser. We record the visible price and a timestamp — same thing a human shopper would do, just consistently.
$487.82
seen 9m ago
Check → 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.
Compare shuckable drives
Lower $/TB is better. Tap Check → for the retailer's live price.
| Product | TB | Lowest $/TB | Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate Expansion Desktop | 16 | $30.49 | |
| Seagate Expansion Desktop | 20 | $33.00 | |
| Seagate Expansion Desktop | 22 | $33.18 | |
| WD Elements | 20 | $34.40 | |
| WD My Book | 12 | $34.92 | |
| WD Elements | 22 | $38.19 | |
| Seagate Expansion Desktop | 12 | $38.33 | |
| WD Elements | 16 | $39.00 | |
| WD My Book | 18 | $41.22 | |
| WD My Book | 16 | $44.03 | |
| WD Elements | 12 | $44.08 | |
| WD Elements | 24 | $44.17 | |
| WD My Book | 14 | $45.71 | |
| WD Elements | 14 | $48.06 | |
| WD Elements | 18 | — | see live price Check → |
Snapshot aggregated Jul 20, 2026, 6:08 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.
How this works
$/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 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.
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 & Plex · CMR vs SMR · WD vs Seagate