- Hard drives remain important where capacity, cost-efficiency and durability trump raw speed
- Most modern hard drives are designed for data centers, servers, and specialized storage functions
- Consumer hard drives are now rare, while enterprise, NAS and video drives dominate
Hard drives are often considered outdated technology, but a closer look at what’s still out there reveals a different story.
After compiling a detailed list of 167 of the best hard drives worth buying, six clear points emerged about who still makes hard drives, what they build, and who they’re actually for.
The first thing you notice is the brand. Western Digital has more drives on the list than anyone else, with 66 models across consumer, NAS, enterprise and specialty categories. This range extends from consumer WD Blue drives to WD Gold and Ultrastar models designed for data centers.
The best hard drive deals of the moment
8TB is the new benchmark
My second point concerns capacity. Seagate is the king of high-end drives, offering six models over 30TB, including several Exos M and Exos X variants that go far beyond what most people associate with spinning drives.
No other manufacturer comes close. Although hard drives have disappeared from many consumer devices, growth in high-end capacity remains critical.
Capacity clustering tells its own story. 8TB is the most common size in the list, appearing 21 times, closely followed by 12TB with 20 entries.
These features appear repeatedly in families such as the WD Red Plus, Seagate IronWolf and Toshiba N300. Drives under 8TB are now virtually redundant in the new 3.5-inch models.
The fourth discovery probably won’t be a big surprise. Nearly half of the models, 80 in total, are enterprise units designed for large-scale data centers and storage.
Product lines like Seagate Exos, WD Ultrastar and Toshiba MG dominate this category, and this is where most hard drive development efforts are now focused, rather than everyday desktops.
The fifth conclusion shows that there is a more targeted audience. There are 43 NAS-specific drives, including Seagate IronWolf and IronWolf Pro, WD Red Plus and Red Pro, and Toshiba’s N300 line. They are designed for always-on systems on home servers and small businesses.
Surveillance drives are much less common, with only 17 models dedicated to video workloads, such as the WD Purple and Seagate SkyHawk AI.
Interestingly, only 10 drives from the long list are intended for the general public, and Toshiba is the only manufacturer that still considers hard drives as performance hardware. If offers 15 models in the X300 and X300 Pro lines for powerful desktops and workstations instead of regular PCs.
It’s clear that while hard drives haven’t become extinct as SSDs have taken over tasks that require speed, spinning drives have now taken over roles where capacity, durability and cost per TB are more important.
A quick word about the list. Excluding all hard drives under 8TB, which are now virtually redundant in the new 3.5-inch models. It also only includes 3.5-inch drives, not 2.5-inch ones. Units from professional refurbishers or rebranded models sold under brands such as HP or Dell were excluded.
