Serverpartdeals has an 18TB for $165 right now. That's would I would get. In fact, I've bought 6 of them in the last couple months.
Dell EXOs are Seagate drives with a firmware that is certified to work on Dell servers. But they will work on other systems just fine.
Yeah, I guess technically what I've heard is some form of 'lower binned drives usually end up going to the external drive market, while the ones that QC test better end up under the enterprise label.'
They have 18TB Exos for $165 USD right now.
I have four 2TB drives in a software RAID0 in my gaming rig. They were manufactured in 2011.
So, I heard (no idea if it's true) that external drives are the lowest-quality drives that companies make, and the enterprise-class drives are generally the best.
The SPD drives come with a warranty as well. For the price difference, I'll take my chances on the recertified drives. I've only ever had one drive fail, and it was a WD external that was shucked.
Dell EXOs 18TB are $165 USD right now.