This 12TB external hard drive has broken a new storage price record

WD 12TB Elements hard drive - $174.99 from Amazon
$174.99 at Amazon

WD 12TB Elements hard drive - $174.99 from Amazon
The Elements 12TB drive is a robust and capable workhorse and, unlike other Amazon deals, is also available from at least two other providers (see below), which is great for non-Prime buyers.

Amazon Prime Day is the perfect excuse to fill your basket with cheap storage and the WD 12TB Elements desktop hard drive is currently the very definition of affordable.

Available for $174.99 at Amazon (with BHphoto and Newegg price matching the retail giant), the drive sets a new record at less than $15 per TB.

WD has cut the price by a whopping $75 (or 30%), making the 12TB Elements drive (WDBWLG0120HBK) the most affordable on the market, regardless of form factor (2.5-inch or 3.5-inch) and type (internal or external).

The WD Elements range provides reliable high capacity storage with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 compatibility. The drives come with a two-year warranty and have been formatted to NTFS.

This device is likely to have a 3.5-inch 5400RPM drive spinning inside, which makes it perfect for local backup storage if cloud storage is simply too slow.

A few brave souls have also managed to extract a WD120EMFZ drive from Elements external hard drives. The model has a 256MB cache and is comparable to the 12TB WD RED NAS hard drive, which nearly twice the price.

12TB remains the sweet spot for hard disk drives - and for storage in general. Although 14TB, 16TB and 18TB hard disk drives are available, they often carry a steep premium. The 14TB Element, for example, retails for $259.99, adding only 2TB extra storage for a near 50% price increase.

TechRadar is rounding up all the top deals over the Prime Day sales period, and we’ve put all the best Prime Day deals in an easy-to-navigate article to help you find the bargains you’re looking for.

Desire Athow
Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.

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