Shopping for a high capacity internal SATA hard drive? Here are our top picks.

Around the turn of the century, some of us were still using hard drives with limits in megabytes. Limits quickly jumped to gigabytes as more of our work and lives shifted into the digital realm. Now, you can easily find a hard drive with several terabytes of space at a surprisingly affordable price, a must for data centers or data recovery specialists. But capacity isn’t the only or even the most important specification of a hard drive, so we’ve compiled this list of the top SATA hard drives, all of which have a 14 terabyte capacity.

Western Digital Ultrastar 14TB DC HC530

A hard drive from Western Digital’s Ultrastar DC HC500 Series came up on top during out tests. The 6Gb/s SATA interface and 512-megabyte cache do their jobs. This HDD uses less power when idling compared to air-filled HDDs, thanks to HelioSeal technology. It also uses slightly less power than the SAS version. All of this comes in a standard 3.5-inch form factor. Plus, you get a 5-year limited warranty if anything goes wrong. If you specifically want CMR, note that Ultrastar HDDs use shingled magnetic recording.

WD RED Pro NAS HDD 14TB Enterprise HDD

Another Western Digital hard drive on this list, the RED Pro NAS HDD is perfect for larger NAS environments up to 24 bays. This is the main difference from Plus drives, which work in NAS systems up to 8 bays. Red Pro HDDs can just as easily be used with RAID configurations and virtualization. At 7200 RPMs and with a 6GB/s SATA interface, the Red PRO 14TB HDD provides similar performance to the Ultrastar at a slightly lower price and uses conventional magnetic recording, which may be compatible with more RAID systems. However, it’s a bit noisier and lacks the HelioSeal technology that decreases power draw.

WD Gold 16TB WD4KRYZ

Western Digital’s Gold series hard drives are marketed toward enterprises, and the cost reflects this. In 2018, the company announced the Gold line’s end of life, only reverse the decision a year later. The marketing power of Gold HDDs just couldn’t be beaten. The new Gold HDDs are based on Ultrastar technology, so they’re quite similar to the first hard drive on this list. The 14-terabyte capacity is one of nearly a dozen capacity options and one that employs HelioSeal tor reduce power usage. Gold series HDDs have an MTBF rating of 2.5M hours and a 5-year limited warranty. If you want multiple encryption options, Ultrastar may be the way to go; however, many users will have no issue with the Gold HDD’s standard encryption and may prefer the proven CMR technology over SMR.

Toshiba MG Series 14TB Enterprise MG07ACA14TE

Toshiba offers an alternative for enterprises that prefer drives with CMR. Compared to Toshiba’s previous enterprise-class HDDs, the MG07ACA14TE uses power 50% more efficiently due to being the world’s first 9-platter helium-sealed drive. This puts it in the same class as WD’s Gold and Ultrastar drives. Toshiba’s option is just slightly slower with a sustained data transfer rate of 248 megabytes per second, and cooling mechanisms and vibration sensors protect the hard drive. It’s a 7200 RPM drive with a 2.5M hour MBTF rating. SuperMicro has qualified the 14TB model for use in select storage server right from the factory, and you can use them with other configurations. However, the 256-megabyte buffer isn’t the largest on this list, and users only have access to 12.2 terabytes.

Seagate 14TB Exos X14 

The last HDD on our list is the Seagate 14TB Exos HDD, an enterprise HDD that many consumers find to be a great value compared to the more expensive HDDs we’ve already discussed. The company confirms this drive uses CMR technology. However, the Exos X14 does come without a few caveats along with that lower price. First, it runs a bit hot. If using several of these HDDs, you may need to invest in more cooling options, which may negate the cost savings of the HDD itself despite having similar specifications. Secondly, our tests showed that the Exos X14 didn’t perform as well as the other HDDs we tested. This HDD offers just 12.7 terabytes and not the full 14 advertised, which puts it on par with the Toshiba HDD. It’s also not the quietest option on this list. Still, if you need an HDD and can’t afford one of the other magnetic hard drives we recommend, you could do worse than Seagate’s Exos.

Where does that leave us? If performance is your main concern, check out the Western Digital’s reliable Ultrastar 14TB HDD unless you want a CMR drive specifically. Otherwise, the other options offer cost-savings if you can sacrifice a bit of performance, heat output, noise, or power usage.