We've seen plenty of great Black Friday NAS deals already, and this may just be one of the best yet. WD's 18TB Elements is an external hard drive enclosure that's designed to be used as a standalone unit, but you can just as easily extract the drive that's housed within and use it in your existing NAS server.
Considering the 18TB drive is now selling for just $229, you're getting a better bargain than just about any other NAS HDD at the moment. Best Buy had an even better deal on the 18TB WD easystore — which is identical to the 18TB Elements drive — where it was going for $199, but that sold out in a matter of hours. I predict this deal also going the same route, so if you need more storage on your home server, best act fast while this 18TB drive is still available.
WD basically uses white-label drives in the Elements enclosure, but what's particularly interesting is that the drives are on par with the brand's Ultrastar DC HC550 portfolio. The HC550 drives are meant for data center use and are filled with helium, and they cost a lot more — the 16TB variant is selling for $299.
So you're essentially getting a great bargain by going with the 18TB Elements in lieu of the costlier data center products. Ultimately, the drive that's within the 18TB Elements is just as reliable as the best WD NAS HDDs — I used several of these drives in the last four years, and they've been reliable. The upside is that you're getting a much better deal in this scenario, so if you want to maximize value, get the 18TB Elements for $229 while it's still available.
As I said above, these drives tend to sell out pretty fast, so if you're looking for affordable NAS storage, best act now.
