Best Internal Hard Drives: Holiday 2023

In our series of Hard Disk Drive guides, here’s the latest update to our list of recommended HDDs. All numbers in the text are updated to reflect pricing at the time of writing.

Best Internal Hard Drives: Holiday 2023

Data storage requirements have kept increasing over the last several years. SSDs have taken over the role of the primary drive in most computing systems. However, when it comes to sheer bulk storage, hard drives (HDDs) continue to be the storage media of choice in areas dealing with large amounts of relatively cold data.

Since the release of the last HDD guide, we have seen the announcement of 24TB CMR drives from both Seagate and Western Digital. The 22TB and lower capacity drives have also seen price reductions. Meanwhile consumer SSDs have seen a resurgence of their own, thanks to a recent (and temporary) bust in flash memory prices. Even with this, it's not enough to challenge large HDDs on a $/GB basis, but it's made things a bit more interesting at the 8TB capacity point.

Looking at the state of the hard drive market this fall, Synology has been selling 4TB - 18TB enterprise hard drives (rebranded Toshiba Enterprise HDDs with custom firmware), though they are meant specifically for Synology NAS units (no warranties if used in other systems). Elsewhere, as the distinction between data center / enterprise drives and consumer NAS drives start to blur amid the contracting market, Toshiba's MG09 HDDs based on FC-MAMR and Western Digital's Ultrastar DC series of data center drives have now been added to our charts.

2023 - New HDDs from Western Digital and Seagate

From a gaming perspective, install sizes of hundreds of GBs are not uncommon for modern games. Long-term backup storage and high-capacity NAS units for consumer use are also ideal use-cases for hard drives. The challenge in picking any hard drive, of course, is balancing workload needs with total drive costs. Most consumers in a non-business settings also require low-power and low-noise, yet, high capacity drives, which we're including as an explicit category as well.

In the current market, the WD Gold, WD Ultrastar DC, and Seagate Exos Enterprise are the only available 24TB options. However, for consumers needing absolute lowest cost at other capacities, the Seagate Exos series fits the bill, with unbelievably low prices compared to other 'consumer' HDDs at similar capacity points. At other capacity points, the most cost-effective drives vary even when similar workload ratings are considered. It must be noted that, as server-focused drives, the Exos series drives are relatively noisy and consume much more power compared to other drives tuned for specific use cases - such as the Toshiba X300 for desktop usage, or the WD Red SMR drives for read-heavy / sparing writes scenarios.

There are many different factors that influence the choice of HDD for a particular use-case. Power consumption and acoustics are in that list, but the differences in those aspects between different HDD families is not a significant concern. The delta in power consumption is usually minor compared to that of the NAS / computer system hosting the drives. Most NAS systems are tucked out of earshot. Desktop systems requiring massive storage capacity generally have active cooling, and the delta in sound ratings between different HDD families is again negligible compared to the noise from the system fans. Keeping these in mind, we have tuned our buyer's guide based on two relevant metrics - workload rating and warranty period.

It goes without saying that consumers looking for a lower workload rating drive should also check out the ones with higher workload ratings, unless the power consumption and acoustics are very important factors. Enterprise drives with higher workload ratings are typically engineered to last longer, use higher quality components, and have longer warranties. Which brings us to the recommendations based on warranty period: unsurprisingly, the players in the workload table get repeated here too.

There are three active vendors in the consumer hard drive space - Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. Their retail offerings currently top out at 24TB, 20TB, and 24TB respectively.

Consumers looking to purchase hard-drives need to have a rough idea of the use-cases they are going to subject the drives to. Based on that, a specific set of metrics needs to be considered. We first take a look at the different metrics that matter, and how various hard drives stack up against each other. Since many hard drive families from different vendors can satisfy the requirements, it may all come down to the pricing. We will present a pricing matrix for various hard drive families against the available capacities.

For our guide, we're narrowing down the vast field of hard drives to the following models/families. In particular, we are excluding surveillance-focused drives such as the WD Purple or Seagate SkyHawk, since these drives are based on the same technology, but often carry a price premium. Meanwhile, we're also making sure to include some of the enterprise / datacenter SATA drives that are available for purchase from e-tailers, as these sometimes offer some great deals in terms of capacity-per-dollar. We have stopped considering the SMR-based WD Red in the guide - with capacities topping out at 6TB and being ill-suited for most NAS use-cases, it is a drive family that is best avoided for general usage.

1. Seagate IronWolf NAS
2. Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS
3. Seagate Exos Enterprise
4. Toshiba MG Series
5. Toshiba N300
6. Toshiba N300 Pro
7. Toshiba X300
8. Toshiba X300 Pro
9. Western Digital Gold
10. Western Digital Red Plus
11. Western Digital Red Pro
12. Western Digital Ultrastar DC Series

A few notes are in order - the Seagate Barracuda Pro that used to appear in previous guides is no longer in consideration. Seagate has not updated this lineup as of late, and we see their IronWolf drives being a very capable alternative to the Barracuda Pro in almost all use-cases. We are also not considering sub-10TB models in this guide. With the increased availability (and decreased price) of 8TB SATA SSDs, we believe the market for sub-10TB drives will disappear, except for legacy RAID arrays looking for replacements without a capacity increase.

Metrics that Matter

One of the easiest ways to narrow down the search for a suitable hard drive is to look at the target market of each family. The table below lists the suggested target market for each hard drive family we are considering today.

After filtering out models that don't apply to your use-case (as an example, for usage in a 4-bay NAS enclosure, one could rule out the Toshiba X300 straight away), we can then take a look at how the specifications of various drive families compare.

Based on these metrics, it is clear that the enterprise drives (Seagate Exos Enterprise, Toshiba MG Series, WD Gold, and WD Ultrastar DC Series) are rated to be more reliable in the long run over a big sample set. However, most consumer use-cases do not need a 550 TB/yr workload rating. 180 - 300 TB/yr workload rating is plenty reasonable for most users when the drives are going to be used as part of RAID arrays.

Pricing Matrix and Concluding Remarks

The matrix below shows the current pricing for each available capacity point in all the considered hard drive families. The drives are segmented based on their workload ratings.

Toshiba is the only vendor paying attention to the desktop storage market with regular updates to the X300 line. However, its reliability metrics are disappointing compared to the NAS drives from all three vendors. In most cases, using one of the NAS drives as a desktop HDD is a no-brainer. The X300 Pro is a good step up in that aspect. In fact, at the highest capacity, it is priced lower than the X300. That said, the Seagate Exos Enterprise at the 18TB capacity point presents the lowest $/TB metric, and wins our recommendation for this market segment despite the high power usage and noise factor. If a silent drive with relatively low power consumption is needed, the X300 Pro series could be an attractive alternative.

Prior to commenting on the other possible use-cases, one thing is clear from the above pricing matrix - if you absolutely require 24TB per disk, the WD Gold, Seagate Exos X24, and the WD Ultrastar DC Series are your only choices for purchase in the retail market currently.

On the SOHO / SMB NAS front, the Seagate Exos series and WD Gold, despite their enterprise background, continue to make a good case across multiple capacity points. The only places where the WD Red series (Pro and Plus) could edge out as a better choice are scenarios where the power consumption and noise need to be kept low. After poring over the datasheets, we have come to realize that the idle power consumption delta for the NAS-focused drives against the enterprise drives (Exos and Gold) is quite significant - sub-3W compared to 5W+. The acoustics across multiple capacity points are also much better. That said, these may not matter to a large segment of the audience for whom workload ratings, warranty, and cost are more important factors.

The IronWolf NAS models deliver slightly better performance compared to the WD Red / WD Red Plus, but, have correspondingly higher power consumption numbers. On the SMB / SME NAS front, the WD Red Pro has started reaching better price points compared to previous quarters, managing to undercut the IronWolf Pro across almost all capacities. However, a plus point for the IronWolf Pro is the inclusion of the Data Rescue Service for a 3-year period in addition to the usual warranty.

Based on the above analysis, the recommendations for the NAS drives are clear - for the absolute highest capacity drive currently in the market (if you have to compulsorily get one) - WD Gold for presenting the best $/TB metric. At other capacity points, it is the Seagate Exos Enterprise that wins out. The 10TB model is currently available for $120, and it presents the best $/TB metric by a huge margin.

Finally, a note on shucking – Drive prices have come down to such an extent that taking out the HDD from an external DAS (and losing the warranty in the process) is no longer worthwhile. Compelling prices often hide reliability issues and lowered workload ratings (HDDs are essentially binned, and allocated to different market segments based on their expected reliaability). In light of this, users should treat money spent on shucked drives as a sunk cost, and ensure that such drives are used only in non-critical scenarios.