2 NAS drives tracked from $35.23/TB. Prices updated every 4 hours.
| $/TB ▲ | Brand / Model | Cap | Interface | Tech | Cache | Sector | Wty | Price | Cond. | 90D | Buy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
👑$35.23 ~ 30d avg | WD Red Pro 22TB NAS WD221KFGX WD221KFGX Refurb · CMR · | 22TB | SATA-6G 7,200 RPM | CMR | 512MB | — | — | $774.99 | REFURB | Buy →Details | ▼ | |
$43.86 ↑ vs 30d avg | WD Red Pro 22TB NAS WD221KFGX WD221KFGX CMR · | 22TB | SATA-6G 7,200 RPM | CMR | 512MB | — | — | $964.99 | new | Buy →Details | ▼ |
We can currently price 2 in-stock 22TB NAS drives from WD. The best rate is $35.23 per terabyte, against a $43.86 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 $775.
The listings split 1 new and 1 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.
A NAS buyer is choosing a configuration rather than a drive, and the number that decides it is usable capacity after parity. At 22TB per drive that works out as follows, before filesystem overhead and before you leave the headroom a pool needs to stay healthy:
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.
All 2 in-stock 22TB 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.
At 22TB 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.
The cheapest in-stock 22TB NAS drive we track works out at $35.23 per terabyte. Prices refresh every few hours, so the table above is the current answer rather than this sentence.
66TB in RAID 5, 44TB in RAID 6, and 44TB 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 22TB 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 22TB 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.