# NAS drive price trends

Monthly median price-per-terabyte for current 8TB+ NAS hard drives (US, new, in stock), from Jul 2024 to the latest month, split into the two tiers people choose between: consumer NAS (WD Red / IronWolf class) and enterprise (Exos / MG / Ultrastar).

> **Interactive version** (hover, zoom, and a capacity-matched cheapest-per-TB table): **[nasdisks.com/articles/nas-drive-price-crunch](https://www.nasdisks.com/articles/nas-drive-price-crunch/)**
>
> Part of the open [NAS drive dataset](https://github.com/deeddy/nas-drive-data), maintained at **[nasdisks.com](https://www.nasdisks.com/)**.

The chart below tracks both tiers from Jul 2024 to the latest month: flat for over a year, then a supply-driven near-doubling from late 2025. The monthly medians it plots are in [`monthly-median-per-tb.csv`](monthly-median-per-tb.csv).

![Median dollars per TB, consumer NAS vs enterprise](nas-price-trend.png)

## The trend

Median price-per-TB sat flat around $20/TB through 2024 and most of 2025, then roughly doubled to the mid-$40s/TB from late 2025, and has held there since. Both tiers moved together: among new drives, enterprise is not the price-per-TB bargain it's assumed to be, and both got hit about equally. The usual driver is the AI datacenter buildout pulling high-capacity nearline supply.

## Files

- [`monthly-median-per-tb.csv`](monthly-median-per-tb.csv) - columns: `month`, `consumer_usd_per_tb`, `enterprise_usd_per_tb`. Computed monthly medians only.

## Method

For each month, take each drive's average price-per-TB across its logged days, then the median of those per-drive values across drives (so a model with more logged days doesn't skew the month). Scope: 8TB and up, US, new in-stock prices, compiled from Amazon price history. CMR/SMR and specs from datasheets.

8TB and up because small drives carry a much higher price-per-TB (fixed per-drive costs spread over less capacity), and which small SKUs happen to be in stock would swing an all-capacity median for reasons unrelated to prices actually moving.

This folder publishes the computed monthly medians only, not the underlying per-drive price observations.