12TB Hard Drives

12TB Hard Drives: price, size and what to pick

What it costs. A 12TB hard drive runs $373.98 to $594.45 today across the 18 we have prices for, a typical $44.17/TB, with the Toshiba MG07 12TB the cheapest space at $31.17/TB. Prices come from several retailers and update daily.

Is 12TB the right size? 12TB is the size most people land on for media: roughly 480 films at Blu-ray quality, or a full backup of every drive in a typical PC several times over.

How long it lasts. Warranties at this size run 5 years typically, and Backblaze measures 3 of these exact models in its datacenter at an average of 2.49% failures a year under continuous use.

Which one to pick. On specs alone the Toshiba MG07 12TB leads the table at 84/100, and it is also the cheapest space here, which makes it the straightforward pick today.

What to check at 12TB

Recording type first. Of the 12TB drives here, 14 are confirmed CMR and 0 are SMR. SMR drives pack tracks closer together and can slow sharply during long writes and RAID rebuilds, so a NAS or a backup target wants CMR. Then look at the workload rating, which says how much reading and writing per year the maker designs the drive for, and the warranty. 5 of these are NAS drives, rated to run continuously.

Every row is one drive at exactly this size. Open a drive’s name for its full spec sheet, price history and, where Backblaze covers the model, its measured failure rate. The hard drive hub lists every capacity.