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16TB NAS Hard Drives - Live Prices

7 NAS drives tracked from $31.25/TB. Prices updated about once a day.

Best $/TB
$31.25
Average $/TB
$50.15
From
$499.99
Condition
Capacity
7 of 7 part numbers
  • $31.25/TB$499.99
    Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB NAS ST16000NE000
    ST16000NE000
    16TB · SATA-6G
    Refurb
  • $43.72/TB$699.44
    Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB NAS ST16000NE000
    ST16000NE000
    16TB · SATA-6G
    New
  • $44.69/TB$714.99
    WD Red Pro 16TB WD161KFGX
    WD161KFGX
    16TB · SATA-6G
    New
  • $49.37/TB$789.97
    Synology HAT5300 16TB NAS
    HAT5300-16T
    16TB · SATA-6G
    Refurb
  • $59.05/TB$944.75
    WD Red Pro 16TB NAS
    16TB · SATA-6G
    New
  • $59.92/TB$958.79
    Synology HAT5300 16TB NAS
    HAT5300-16T
    16TB · SATA-6G
    New
  • $63.06/TB$1,008.90
    Synology HAT5310 16TB SATA
    HAT5310-16T
    16TB · SATA-6G
    New

How much can 16TB store?

One 16TB 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: 462 camera-days - 8 cameras for 57 days. The arithmetic: 3.2 Mbps ÷ 8 = 0.4 MB/s × 86,400 s = 34.56 GB per camera-day; 16,000 GB ÷ 34.56 = 462 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: 3,200,000 photos (our assumption: 5 MB per JPEG)
  • RAW photos: 533,333 frames (our assumption: 30 MB per frame)
  • 1080p films: 2,000 films (our assumption: 8 GB per film)
  • 4K HDR films: 266 films (our assumption: 60 GB per film)
  • TV seasons (1080p): 533 seasons (our assumption: 30 GB per season)
  • Lossless music tracks: 533,333 tracks (our assumption: 30 MB per FLAC track)
  • Office documents: 80,000,000 files (our assumption: 200 KB per file)

Guides for this capacity: best 16TB hard drive · the HDD price forecast · fill a NAS at today's prices

Every tracked 16TB NAS drive

Every listing we track at this size - 7 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 16TB costs in a NAS today

We can currently price 7 in-stock 16TB NAS drives from 3 brands (Seagate, WD and Synology). The best rate is $31.25 per terabyte, against a $49.37 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 $500.

The listings split 5 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 16TB 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 16TB 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  48TB
RAID 6  32TB
RAID 10 32TB
$2,000 for the drives
6-bay
RAID 5  80TB
RAID 6  64TB
RAID 10 48TB
$3,000 for the drives
8-bay
RAID 5  112TB
RAID 6  96TB
RAID 10 64TB
$4,000 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 1 in-stock 16TB drive 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. 6 further listings have no recording technology recorded, and those render as unverified rather than assumed.

Warranty terms in stock run 5 years, and workload ratings run 300 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 16TB the right rung?

At 16TB 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 16TB NAS drive we track works out at $31.25 per terabyte. Prices refresh about once a day, so the table above is the current answer rather than this sentence.

48TB in RAID 5, 32TB in RAID 6, and 32TB 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 16TB 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 16TB 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.