NAS drive value frontier
Every in-production CMR drive we have a live price for, plotted by capacity against price per TB. Each dot is colour-graded by how good a deal it is: green drives sit on the value frontier (nothing beats them on both capacity and $/TB), fading to grey the more you overpay per terabyte for that size.
Colour = deal quality (green is best value for the capacity, grey is worst). $/TB is the cheapest in-stock new offer we track, normalized to USD; lower is better. Hover a point for details. Buy links are Amazon affiliate links.
Drives on the value frontier
These 5 drives are the value picks: for their capacity, nothing on sale is cheaper per terabyte. Sorted small to large. Still check reliability and noise before buying - the frontier is about price, not everything.
| Drive | Capacity | $/TB | Price | AFR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
MG09ACA18TE
Toshiba MG09
|
18 TB | $21.80 | $392 | - |
|
WUH722020BLE6L4
WD Ultrastar DC HC560
|
20 TB | $26.59 | $532 | - |
|
ST22000NM001E
Seagate Exos X22
|
22 TB | $31.37 | $690 | - |
|
ST24000NT002
Seagate IronWolf Pro
|
24 TB | $35.37 | $849 | - |
|
WUH722626ALE6L4
WD Ultrastar DC HC590
|
26 TB | $41.27 | $1,073 | 0.4% |
How to read the value frontier
Plotting every drive by capacity and price per terabyte, most sit above the line - there is always another drive with the same or more capacity for the same or less money per TB. Those are dominated: you can do better. The drives on the lower edge are non-dominated - nothing beats them on both axes at once. That edge is the value frontier.
It answers one question well: for a given capacity, what is the cheapest sensible drive to buy? It deliberately ignores everything else. A frontier drive can still be loud, power-hungry, or short on field-failure data. Use it to build a shortlist, then sort that shortlist by reliability and noise before you spend.
Prices are the cheapest in-stock new offer we track, refreshed daily and normalized to USD, so the frontier shifts as deals come and go.