What Are the Best Drives for a NAS or Plex Server?
Published: June 28, 2026
Pulling live prices…
📊 As of July 25, 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.com is $45.25/TB or $0.045/GB, widest choice around $39.44/TB, with some as cheap as $25/TB across 351 live listings.
📊 As of July 25, 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on eBay.com is $37.21/TB or $0.037/GB, widest choice around $28.08/TB, with some as cheap as $12.25/TB across 176 live listings.
📊 As of July 25, 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Newegg.com is $46.75/TB or $0.047/GB, widest choice around $44.93/TB, with some as cheap as $21.46/TB across 168 live listings.
📊 As of July 24, 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Seagate.com is $36/TB or $0.036/GB, widest choice around $37.14/TB, with some as cheap as $33/TB across 11 live listings (based on only 11 listings).
📊 As of 25 July 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.co.uk is £42.53/TB or £0.043/GB, widest choice around £32.93/TB, with some as cheap as £18.88/TB across 234 live listings.
📊 As of 25 July 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on eBay.co.uk is £28.26/TB or £0.028/GB, widest choice around £17.3/TB, with some as cheap as £4.83/TB across 60 live listings.
📊 As of 25 July 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Overclockers.co.uk is £43.75/TB or £0.044/GB, widest choice around £43.5/TB, with some as cheap as £37.5/TB across 24 live listings.
📊 As of 25 July 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Box.co.uk is £46.02/TB or £0.046/GB, widest choice around £45.44/TB, with some as cheap as £38/TB across 26 live listings.
📊 As of 25. Juli 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.de is 47,67 €/TB or 0,048 €/GB, widest choice around 47,35 €/TB, with some as cheap as 21,87 €/TB across 234 live listings.
📊 As of 25. Juli 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on eBay.de is 46,5 €/TB or 0,047 €/GB, widest choice around 51,85 €/TB, with some as cheap as 13,49 €/TB across 11 live listings (based on only 11 listings).
📊 As of 25. Juli 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on getgoods.de is 50,56 €/TB or 0,051 €/GB, with some as cheap as 49,29 €/TB across 6 live listings (based on only 6 listings).
📊 As of 25 July 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on eBay.com.au is $68.25/TB or $0.068/GB, widest choice around $55.92/TB, with some as cheap as $38.1/TB across 50 live listings.
📊 As of 25 juillet 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.fr is 47,59 €/TB or 0,048 €/GB, widest choice around 49,35 €/TB, with some as cheap as 15,29 €/TB across 263 live listings.
📊 As of 25 de julio de 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.es is 49,99 €/TB or 0,05 €/GB, widest choice around 49,55 €/TB, with some as cheap as 23,83 €/TB across 250 live listings.
📊 As of July 25, 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.ca is $66.67/TB or $0.067/GB, widest choice around $61.08/TB, with some as cheap as $39.06/TB across 150 live listings.
📊 As of July 25, 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on eBay.ca is $39.37/TB or $0.039/GB, with some as cheap as $14.38/TB across 7 live listings (based on only 7 listings).
📊 As of July 25, 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Newegg.ca is $62.01/TB or $0.062/GB, widest choice around $60.73/TB, with some as cheap as $34.31/TB across 88 live listings.
📊 As of 25 juli 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.nl is € 49,99/TB or € 0,05/GB, widest choice around € 49,61/TB, with some as cheap as € 27,5/TB across 82 live listings.
📊 As of 25 luglio 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.it is 49,13 €/TB or 0,049 €/GB, widest choice around 46,81 €/TB, with some as cheap as 17,1 €/TB across 296 live listings.
📊 As of 25 luglio 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on eBay.it is 51,49 €/TB or 0,051 €/GB, widest choice around 49,28 €/TB, with some as cheap as 31,24 €/TB across 19 live listings (based on only 19 listings).
📊 As of 25 juli 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.se is 565 kr/TB or 0,565 kr/GB, widest choice around 475 kr/TB, with some as cheap as 446 kr/TB across 8 live listings (based on only 8 listings).
📊 As of 25 lipca 2026, the typical CMR HDD (4TB+) on Amazon.pl is 234 zł/TB or 0,234 zł/GB, widest choice around 171 zł/TB, with some as cheap as 109 zł/TB across 84 live listings.
Sourced from real discussions on r/homelab, r/Plex and r/DataHoarder, cross-checked against live PricePerGig listings.
There are two questions tangled together here — best for NAS, and best for Plex — and they get conflated because so many people run their Plex server on a NAS.
So, if you’ve put Plex on a NAS with RAID of some sort, any sort, then you want a good-quality CMR drive. Well — any CMR drive, really. Who cares what it is, where it’s been before, or how many hours it’s spun for? Not you: you’ve got redundancy in your NAS. That’s my opinion, so go for the cheapest price per gig on a CMR drive of any brand.
If you’ve just got Plex sitting on your PC, for movies alone, any spinning drive will do — SMR, CMR, cheapest. Movies and TV shows don’t stress storage until you hit 12K resolution, which is unlikely on your Plex server!
The table above shows the best value CMR drives on your marketplace, which is exactly where most of your money should go.
Big hard drives are the heart of it
Let me kill the SSD fantasy first.
Your media library does not need SSD speed. A film streams off the disk in a gentle trickle, far slower than even a tired hard drive can deliver.
So fill the bays with large, cheap, reliable hard drives and chase the lowest price per TB on the live table.
A small SSD for the operating system or Plex metadata is fine. The actual content belongs on spinning rust.
NAS drives versus desktop drives
This is the eternal homelab debate, so here is my honest take.
A one or two bay box will usually run happily on good desktop drives. No need to overthink it.
Once you stack four, six or eight drives in one chassis, things change. Vibration from all those spinning platters, constant always-on duty, and heat start to bite. NAS and enterprise drives are tuned for exactly that, and they earn their keep in a dense box.
Match the drive to the build, not to forum bragging.
Reliability without the myths
Everyone wants the magic most reliable brand. The truth is less exciting.
Modern drives from the big names are all broadly reliable. Failure tracks more with luck, workload and cooling than with the logo.
So do not agonise over brand. Do this instead.
- Run redundancy, like RAIDZ2 or a double mirror, so two drives can die and you are fine.
- Keep an offsite or cloud copy of anything irreplaceable.
- Cool the drives properly and do not cram them into a hotbox.
Redundancy beats brand loyalty every single time.
How I would buy
The simple, dense, cheap plan.
- Pick the capacity sitting lowest on price per TB on the live table above.
- Buy enough drives to run proper redundancy from day one.
- Leave a bay or two spare so future you can expand without a rebuild.
- Add one small SSD for the OS if your NAS supports it.
The bottom line
The best drives for a NAS or Plex server are big, reliable hard drives bought for the lowest price per TB, with redundancy doing the heavy lifting on safety.
Skip SSDs for the bulk media, match NAS or enterprise drives to busy multi-bay builds, and let the live table above point you at the right drive for your marketplace. Then go and fill it up.
Go and see these great CMR drives in the full list, and read more about NAS and enterprise drives here.
