WD Ultrastar HC690 32TB and Seagate Exos 32TB can land in the same procurement spreadsheet, but they should not be treated as equivalent 32TB enterprise drives. The architectural difference is the decision.
HC690 is WD UltraSMR/SMR for qualified SMR-aware stacks. The tracked Exos 32TB row is a Seagate enterprise CMR drive. That difference affects compatibility, workload fit and operational risk before price enters the conversation.
Choose Seagate Exos 32TB for conventional enterprise storage that expects CMR behavior. Choose WD HC690 32TB only when the storage stack is already qualified for UltraSMR/host-managed SMR and density per rack is the primary goal. If the stack is not SMR-aware, Exos wins even if HC690 looks cheaper per raw TB.
Use this as the procurement-level screen before looking at live price rows.
| Decision point | Ultrastar HC690 32TB | Exos 32TB |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | UltraSMR / host-managed SMR | CMR in tracked Exos 32TB row |
| Capacity | 32TB | 32TB |
| Interface | SATA and SAS variants | SATA 6Gb/s in tracked row |
| Cache | 512MB | 512MB in tracked row |
| Best workload | SMR-aware object and retention tiers | Conventional enterprise storage |
| Avoid for | Unqualified RAID/NAS/random-write pools | Workloads requiring WD UltraSMR fleet standardization |
| Procurement risk | Host-stack compatibility | Exact Exos SKU/interface qualification |
| Decision metric | Architecture first, price second | Compatibility first, price second |
This shows the capacity delta only. The financial answer comes from the live $/TB rows on the page.
| Drive count | Ultrastar HC690 32TB raw | Exos 32TB raw | Raw delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 bays | 128TB | 128TB | 0TB |
| 6 bays | 192TB | 192TB | 0TB |
| 8 bays | 256TB | 256TB | 0TB |
| 12 bays | 384TB | 384TB | 0TB |
No exact in-stock live row is currently matched for WSH723220ALN6L4 / ST32000NM004K. If no alternatives render, the model should be treated as unavailable in the tracked live catalogue.
Live prices · updated every 4-5 hours · last checked recently · exact-model rows only
Nothing in this tier is in stock right now. That is a stock statement, not a catalogue gap — see every channel we track.
This table is computed from live DatacenterDisk rows when an exact in-stock match exists. It is intentionally blank for unavailable models rather than filled with stale prices.
| Live model | Drive price | $/TB | 100TB raw target | 500TB raw target | 1PB raw target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No exact in-stock row is available right now. Use the availability table for nearby live alternatives, then re-check the exact model before ordering. | |||||
A 32TB label hides the most important distinction. HC690 obtains its density through WD UltraSMR. Exos 32TB in the tracked DatacenterDisk row is a conventional-recording enterprise Seagate drive. A normal storage stack can treat the latter as block storage in a way it should not assume for HC690.
That does not make HC690 inferior. It makes it specialized. In the right architecture, the denser SMR design can lower system-level cost. In the wrong one, it is a compatibility problem.
Raw capacity is tied at 32TB per drive, but system economics can diverge. HC690 fleets may be built around SMR-aware write shaping and high density. Exos fleets may prioritize conventional behavior and broader plug-in compatibility.
Compare cost per protected TB, watts per protected TB and qualification cost. A drive-level idle watt figure is useful, but shelves, controllers, fans and rebuild time decide the final economics.
Choose Exos for conventional enterprise servers, backup targets, ZFS pools, many Ceph deployments and environments where the storage stack has not been designed for zoned SMR behavior.
Choose HC690 for a data-center platform that already supports host-managed SMR and can turn density into fewer shelves or lower rack cost. The environment has to be known before the price comparison is meaningful.
No. HC690 is WD UltraSMR/SMR; the tracked Exos 32TB row is CMR. They need different compatibility checks.
The CMR Exos path is the safer default unless the RAID/storage platform explicitly supports HC690's SMR behavior.
Yes, but mainly in qualified SMR-aware fleets where density reduces shelves, power, rack units or operations cost.
No. Price per TB is the first screen, not the whole decision. Match recording method, interface, bay count, firmware support, warranty position and rebuild risk before accepting the cheapest row.
Specification claims on this page were checked against the pages below on 1 September 2026. Where a widely-repeated figure did not survive that check, we report what the source says now and say so in the text rather than repeating the familiar number.