(opens in new tab)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 (opens in new tab) (with BHphoto (opens in new tab) and Newegg (opens in new tab) 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).
- Browse all the latest offers at Amazon (opens in new tab)
- Save with a 30-day free Amazon Prime trial (opens in new tab)
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 (opens in new tab) 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 (opens in new tab), 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.
- Here's our list of the best portable SSDs (opens in new tab) right now
- Check out our list of the best external hard drives (opens in new tab) out there
- We've built a list of the best secure hard drives (opens in new tab) on the market
