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12TB NAS Hard Drives - Live Prices

8 NAS drives tracked from $33.33/TB. Prices updated about once a day.

Best $/TB
$33.33
Average $/TB
$45.25
From
$399.99
Condition
Capacity
7 of 7 part numbers (8 offers)
  • $33.33/TB$399.99
    WD Red Pro 12TB WD121KFBX
    WD121KFBX
    12TB · SATA-6G
    Refurb
  • $38.33/TB$460.00
    WD Red 12TB WD120EFAX
    WD120EFAX
    12TB · SATA-6G
    Refurb
  • $44.17/TB$529.99
    Toshiba N300 Pro 12TB
    12TB · SATA-6G
    New
  • $44.48/TB$533.81
    WD Red Plus 12TB WD120EFGX
    WD120EFGX
    12TB · SATA-6G
    New
  • $45.00/TB$539.99
    WD Red Pro 12TB NAS WD122KFBX
    WD122KFBX
    12TB · SATA-6G
    New
  • $49.92/TB$599.00
    Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB NAS ST12000NE0008
    ST12000NE0008
    12TB · SATA-6G · 2 offers
    New
  • $56.17/TB$674.00
    WD Red Pro 12TB WD121KFBX
    WD121KFBX
    12TB · SATA-6G
    New

How much can 12TB store?

One 12TB NAS drive, in decimal units (1TB = 1,000GB), before file-system and RAID overhead. Each line is a division you can redo; the per-file sizes are our assumptions and say so.

Security cameras, recording continuously: 347 camera-days - 8 cameras for 43 days. The arithmetic: 3.2 Mbps ÷ 8 = 0.4 MB/s × 86,400 s = 34.56 GB per camera-day; 12,000 GB ÷ 34.56 = 347 camera-days. The bitrate is WD's reference figure for one stream (single stream, 1080p, h.265, 25fps), from WD Purple / WD Purple Pro data sheets (footnote 3); the 8-camera count is our example. A camera set to a higher bitrate fills the drive proportionally faster.

  • Photos: 2,400,000 photos (our assumption: 5 MB per JPEG)
  • RAW photos: 400,000 frames (our assumption: 30 MB per frame)
  • 1080p films: 1,500 films (our assumption: 8 GB per film)
  • 4K HDR films: 200 films (our assumption: 60 GB per film)
  • TV seasons (1080p): 400 seasons (our assumption: 30 GB per season)
  • Lossless music tracks: 400,000 tracks (our assumption: 30 MB per FLAC track)
  • Office documents: 60,000,000 files (our assumption: 200 KB per file)

Guides for this capacity: best 12TB hard drive · the HDD price forecast · fill a NAS at today's prices

Every tracked 12TB NAS drive

Every listing we track at this size - 8 product pages, including ones with no current offer. Out-of-stock pages carry specs and in-stock alternatives, never a stale price.

Reference pages for these NAS drives

Part numbers - what each field in the number means, and the sibling variants it is confused with
CMR or SMR - the recording technology, with the manufacturer document it rests on

What 12TB costs in a NAS today

We can currently price 8 in-stock 12TB NAS drives from 3 brands (WD, Toshiba and Seagate). The best rate is $33.33 per terabyte, against a $45.00 median across the same capacity - a spread worth noticing, because at this size the gap between the cheapest listing and the middle of the market is real money rather than rounding. The lowest ticket price on a single drive is $400.

The listings split 6 new and 2 recertified, and for a NAS that distinction carries more weight than it does in a desktop. An array runs its drives continuously, so the warranty behind each one is a live concern rather than a formality - new carries the manufacturer's, recertified carries a reseller's, and the discount is the compensation for that difference. Our recertified guidance covers what to check before a drive goes into a pool.

What 12TB drives actually build

A NAS buyer is choosing a configuration rather than a drive, and the number that decides it is usable capacity after parity. At 12TB per drive that works out as follows, before filesystem overhead and before you leave the headroom a pool needs to stay healthy:

4-bay
RAID 5  36TB
RAID 6  24TB
RAID 10 24TB
$1,600 for the drives
6-bay
RAID 5  60TB
RAID 6  48TB
RAID 10 36TB
$2,400 for the drives
8-bay
RAID 5  84TB
RAID 6  72TB
RAID 10 48TB
$3,200 for the drives

Those totals are drives only. The enclosure, the memory and the drive bays you leave empty for a future expansion are separate costs, and the last of those is the one people forget: filling every bay on day one means the next upgrade is a full replacement rather than an addition. Our RAID planner works through the configurations properly, and replacing drives with larger ones covers the upgrade path when you get there.

Recording technology at this capacity

All 4 in-stock 12TB drives we can verify use conventional recording, which is what an array needs. Shingled drives overlap their tracks to gain density, and the cost of that is rewrite behaviour that can turn a RAID rebuild into a multi-day event or make it fail outright. At this capacity the stock we track is clean. 4 further listings have no recording technology recorded, and those render as unverified rather than assumed.

Warranty terms in stock run 3 to 5 years, and workload ratings run 180 to 550TB per year. That rating is the manufacturer's statement about sustained annual writes, and a NAS serving a household rarely approaches it - it matters when the array is a backup target or a surveillance recorder rather than a media library.

Is 12TB the right rung?

At 12TB the rebuild window is the constraint worth planning around. Resilvering a drive this size takes many hours and often more than a day depending on how busy the pool is, and for the whole of that window a single-parity array has no redundancy left. That is the argument for RAID 6 or RAIDZ2 at this capacity rather than RAID 5, and it is an argument about time exposed rather than about any particular drive being unreliable.

The general rule is that cost per terabyte improves as you go up the ladder until it does not, and where it stops improving moves with the market rather than sitting at a fixed capacity. Comparing the live rate on this page against the neighbouring rungs is the only reliable way to find that point on the day you are buying.

Frequently Asked Questions

The cheapest in-stock 12TB NAS drive we track works out at $33.33 per terabyte. Prices refresh about once a day, so the table above is the current answer rather than this sentence.

36TB in RAID 5, 24TB in RAID 6, and 24TB in RAID 10, before filesystem overhead. RAID 6 costs you one more drive of capacity and buys the ability to survive a second failure during a rebuild.

Every in-stock 12TB listing we can verify is conventional recording, which is what an array needs. Any shingled drive that appears is badged SMR in the table.

They are widely used for exactly this, but the warranty comes from a reseller rather than the manufacturer, and drives bought together from one batch can age together. Verify on arrival rather than on the listing, and consider mixing sources across the array.

Larger drives usually improve cost per terabyte, but rebuild windows lengthen with capacity, and at 12TB and above that is the constraint rather than the price. RAID 6 or RAIDZ2 rather than single parity is the standard answer at this size.