26TB Hard Drive: What WD and Seagate Actually Document, With Amazon.co.uk Prices

26TB hard drive price on Amazon

Prices are pounds sterling inc VAT. New and used offers share this table, so read the Condition column before you read the price. The table can include NAS and surveillance models such as WD Red Pro and Purple Pro, so a low row may not be the class you came for.

If you searched for a 26TB hard drive sale, this page cannot confirm one. We print the current price against each listing and no earlier price for it, so a row here does not show whether today's figure is a reduction. Buy on Amazon opens the listing itself.

What a 26TB drive is built on: 11 disks and a density step

Western Digital's data sheet calls the Ultrastar DC HC590 the world's first 11-disk HDD platform, with capacity of up to 26 TB in CMR. Every model in its table, 24 TB and 26 TB, SATA and SAS, reads CMR under recording technology. WD credits the storage density to those 11 disks combined with its energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording, or ePMR, which increases tracks per inch.

That table is the argument for 26 TB over 24 TB within this family. Density and transfer rate go up, and the power rows do not move. The two extra terabytes therefore lower idle watts per terabyte on WD's own figures.

The higher rate also absorbs most of the extra capacity when a whole drive has to be written. At the stated maximum, 26 TB takes 26,000,000,000,000 bytes / 302,000,000 bytes a second, or 86,093 seconds, about 23.9 hours. The 24 TB model takes 83,624 seconds, about 23.2 hours. That is roughly 41 minutes more for two more terabytes. Both sums assume the maximum rate from start to finish, so treat them as floors rather than forecasts.

26TB hard drive WD: Ultrastar HC590, WD Gold and the HC670 we could not read

The HC590 model number carries its own configuration. In the xx position, E6 means 512e SATA 6 Gb/s and 52 means 512e SAS 12 Gb/s. A separate field marks the pin 3 arrangement: the sheet says L = Legacy Pin 3 config, no Power Disable. Read the full model number before buying, because two drives can share the 26 TB name and differ in those fields. The interface limit is 600 MB/s on SATA and 1,200 MB/s on SAS, though the sustained figure is 302 MB/s on both.

Listings do not always print that long form. One HC590 listing we track carries the short code 0F65672 instead, and we cannot read the interface or pin 3 fields from a code like that. Where a row shows only a short code, ask the seller for the WUH722626AL model number first.

WD rates the HC590 at 550 TB a year and up to 2.5 million hours MTBF, and its sheet states a 5-year limited warranty. Sector formats are 512e and 4Kn on all four variants.

WD Gold reaches the same size as a SATA drive, WD261KRYZ, the first model in a list that also holds WD242KRYZ, WD221KRYZ, WD203KRYZ and WD181KRYZ. Its sheet says ArmorCache is available in 22 TB and above, and that it provides enterprise power loss protection of your data in write-cache enabled mode, so at this capacity it applies. The same sheet gives a five-year limited warranty and up to 2.5 million hours MTBF.

A third WD name exists. Western Digital's UK site has a page for a 26TB Ultrastar DC HC670, but we have not been able to read its specification, so we state no recording technology, interface or warranty for it. Do not assume it matches the HC590.

26TB hard drive Seagate: recertified part numbers, no new sheet found

Seagate's Exos M data sheet runs 32, 30, 28 and 24 TB, with no 26 TB column. We have not found a Seagate document for a new 26 TB Exos. The numbers that do exist are on Seagate's factory recertified sheet: ST26000NM000C, ST26000NM001C and ST26000NM002C, in a table headed SATA 6 Gb/s.

Seagate's sheet also prints 2,400 power-on hours a year for this column, and its support page lists ST26000NM000C with a 6-month limited warranty. These Seagate documents do not use the word Exos for the ST26000 numbers, so a title pairing the two is the seller's wording.

What a used row does and does not prove is the same at every capacity. The 28TB hard drive page sets that out, and refurbished enterprise hard drives takes the wider question of buying this way.

26TB hard drive for a NAS or an internal build

Our catalogue rejects external drives and multi-packs, so each row is a single internal drive. For a 26TB hard drive in a NAS, we have not opened a document that ties a 26 TB model to a named NAS machine, and we have not read a sheet for the WD Red Pro at this size, so we vouch for no pairing. Take the exact part number to your NAS maker's list.

Check the interface next. The HC590 comes in both SATA and SAS, so a row marked SAS needs a SAS controller; SAS vs SATA sets out that rule. If 26 TB is more than the job needs, the 24TB hard drive page compares the two WD platforms at that size, and the 28TB hard drive page starts where Seagate's new line picks up again.