12TB WD External drive for $180 at BestBuy. $15/TB

[lingyi]

For the handful of those who accept that very large hard drives, 8TB+ are okay as long as you practice proper backup procedures. Available here: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-12tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/63642...?skuId=6364259

They were available about a month ago and I decided not to buy because there were no reviews.

Pros:

Good reviews
Huge!

Cons:

Drive is still new, out for about a month or so.
Reports are it's likely SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) which means slow writes. Anyone who owns the 8TB Seagate Archive drives, knows how slow writes are. Reads are fine.
Reportedly 5400 RPM with 512MB cache
Speculation is that these may be binned 14TB drives rebadged as 12TB. Discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/du0op4/is_the_wd120emfz_12tb_easystore_a...irmwarelocked/
Some of the drives require the extra 3.3V power line not available on older SATA power connectors. Discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/druoq0/shucked_12tb_easystore_and_found_wd120emfz/

My $0.02 I would buy a set (one for storage, one for backup, one spare) if I was in need of the extra storage right now. For the short foreseeable future, I'll probably stick to 8TB & 10TB drives as upgrades. Hopefully by that time, 14TB drives will become available as bargain externals.

[lordsmurf]

Yeah, I'll stick to my Seagate 8tb pair for now. I'd like to see PMR external 16gb for under $250.

Still wanting a 16gb SSD under $500, with fatter 3.5" form factor to allow TLC. The QLC writes are pathetic with large video files, even worse than SSHD. Until then, 4tb EVO 850 TLC for me.

Some may say "dream on", but I'm patient, it will happen.

[lingyi]

I bit the bullet because one of my 8TB drives has some bad sectors and I had to use my last replacement drive. Thankfully the failing drive is still under warranty. Scary times for me. I got three drives (main, backup and spare) and have decased one so far. It's a White label WD Red NAS drive, WD120EMAZ which according to this eBay listing is a 5400 RPM helium drive: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Digital-White-Label-RED-WD120EMAZ-12TB-5400RPM-256MB-...-/392512847538

I'm running the transfer from a 8TB drive internal to the 12TB in an external USB 3.0 multi-drive enclosure and getting 110-115MB/s steady and short peaks up to 180MB/s, so it doesn't seem to be a shingled drive (*knock wood*) as my 8TB Seagate Archive drives are way slower! I'll know tomorrow, how things went. Two more to go!

[lingyi]

I decased the other two drives and they're both White label WD120EMAZ. I'm doing a transfer on the second drive on another computer, and getting ~135MB/s steady. The transfer is from a 8TB Seagate Archive drive, but read speed has always been okay with these drives.