Update: We've added the 8TB model, which is now on sale at a great price.
If you need voluminous high-performance internal storage, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better deal than the 8TB and 12TB WD Red Plus NAS hard drives that are on sale for Prime Day. WD's 8TB Red Plus is now marked down to a fantastic $129 at Newegg (opens in new tab), an all-time low that comes with free shipping. If you're looking for yet more storage, you can find the 12TB model for a mere $179 (opens in new tab). That's an all-time low, and comes with free shipping from Newegg (you'll need to use the FTSBUAA749promo code).
This is the cheapest we can remember seeing WD internal drives of this caliber — the 8TB and 12TB WD Red Pro NAS drives weigh in at only $15- to $16-per-TB.
This is a great price for a 3.5" SATA drives, but there are a few differences between the two models. The 12TB spins at 7,200 RPM, boasts a 256MB cache, and can deliver up to 196 MB/s (12TB) of throughput.
Meanwhile, the 8TB model steps back to a 5,640 RPM rating and 128MB of cache, but still manages to deliver 185 MB/s of throughput, which is incredibly impressive given its slower spindle speed.
While the Red Plus NAS HDDs are officially geared for demanding use in a network storage device, these drives will be just as potent in a desktop PC. The Red Plus drives also use high-performance Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) tech, so you don't have to worry about the performance-sapping SMR technology that is often found in value-centric drives.
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(opens in new tab)Many value seekers will buy cheap external hard drives and "shuck" them by popping them out of their casing, thus getting a solid deal on a slower hard drive that they can then install into a desktop PC. However, shucking a drive voids the warranty.
In contrast, these drives are already configured as internal drives, meaning there's no warranty-voiding shucking required, and they have a three-year warranty. The warranty covers 24x7 use in multi-drive environments, like small or medium business NAS with up to 8 drive bays, so they're designed to survive in far harsher environments than you'll find in your average PC.
The warranty also covers a 180TB/year workload, so the drives are plenty robust. Paired with a 600,000 load/unload cycle rating, this three-year warranty is far above what you'll find with most desktop PC-class internal drives.
These drives are great for bulk data storage, like videos, pictures, and backups, but check out our Prime Day SSD deals page if you're in the market for much speedier devices for gaming and other high-performance workloads.
