This is a bit of a cherry pick.
Sure the drives are dropping slower but at the end of the day, I have a mental ‘limit’ on hard drive prices.
I paid $250 AUD for 3TB once.
Then I paid $250 AUD for 5TB
Then 8 and finally, 16.
It’s taken some time but it continues to evolve. It’s going to take a very long time before an SSD which lasts in excess of 5 to 10 years, matches HDD speeds (you heard me) and costs less than $250 AUD for 16TB.
If you consider inflation, they have come down kinda? lol
*stares at 20TB for $280 Seagate Exos*
Does it really need to?
Already asking for alot.
HDDs are getting cheaper at the high end.
SSDs are still new enough that they are still figuring out how to get economic viability where HDDs were a decade ago.
1TB for $100 is new in NVMEs for example.
I believe that is just the nature of the beast. SSDs are much simpler from a manufacturing standpoint and benefit from general advances in chip production that keep driving the costs down.
NANDs are still produced in 14-15nm afaik. The only reason they got more capacity is 3d stacking but that has an obvious cost wall.
I’d assume there really isn’t much room for HDD prices to come down in contrast to SSDs since the latter always fetched a premium until the technology started becoming more commonplace.
they’ve barely moved in 4+ years though
I’ve bought a used Crucial MX500 250GB for 30€ in 2019.
Last week I got a Crucial MX500 1TB for 45€.
I can get a 2TB for below double-price but I only need 1 TB and I read that it has a different build with lower speed (lower TLC, smaller DRAM or something, I don’t know).
Exactly 4 years and certainly not barely moved.
they’re near 100€ here, but sure, 250gb was 100€ 10 years ago.
I’ve got a Samsung 970 evo 1tb for 99 EUR in 2020. Last week (2023) I’ve a Kingston KC 3000 2TB for the same price.
This is not what I call “barely moved”.
depends on your area
I think it’s simply a matter of physical limitations, we basically reached the physical limit of how hard disk work storing while ssd relie on microchips and we are becoming capable of making more and more circuitry in the same amount of silicon which makes it cheaper
$16.99 …what are your thoughts on it? For the price I’m thinking of trying a few out, but I’m learning about datahoarding first.
Spinning rust storage prices are hold in place by the WD/Seagate cartel.
They can’t do the same shit with Samsung, Micron, intel, etc. in the game.
M.2 ssd are tge biggest deal but i only have one slot
One day I shall have a full nvme NAS with 12x 8TD nvme disks? :D
Pretty common. Drive manufacturers aren’t able to reduce costs much because most of the cost cutting measures were figured out already. With SSDs there is still plenty of opportunity
this is actually bad news, because el cheapo ssds are not good for “unpowered” long time storage
expensive 1 bit per cell ssds maybe, but not multiple bits per cell (and those are the cheap types of ssds)
so for long time hoarders nothing really changes until hdd supply lasts, let’s hope hdd supply will last for long years
1 bit per cell ssds
Are they even there on the market anymore? I couldn’t find any in my country’s dominant tech store chain, and there are barely any MLC drives (it’s just Samsung SM883 up to 1TB and Dell 400 up to 480GB)
The main cause is that when it comes to 12TB HDDs and higher , there are only a few manufacturers like WD, Seagate, and Toshiba. However, in the case of SSDs, everyone seems to be making one—MSI, Gigabyte, Samsung, Asus, and more. With HDDs, there’s no real competition based on cost or price anymore; it’s more about who can reach 40 or 50TB first. who can reach 40 or 50TB first.
Again, cherry picking by only using mid sized HDDs against low capacity SSDs.
Ignoring this graph.
The 2tb HDD I have in my build list cost about the same as the 1tb Samsung m2.
At that point I might as well go for a 2tb ssd honestly.
12tb is mid size now? shame that this hobby got expensive so quick with larger drives costing way more than the usual midpoint
The trick is to get the lightly used 12TB drives from the people who just upgraded to 20TB drives.
But even if you buy new it’s not really expensive per se, the issue is more when expenses happen all at once. If you expect that $350 18TB drive in the post to last about 5 years, that’s $350/5/12 = $6/month, which really isn’t that bad (rough estimate assuming the value will drop to 0, and ignoring opportunity cost; also energy is free)
it’s still a big clump sum unfortunately. paying 400-500€ for one 18tb drive and needing two, that’s way too much money. i used to buy two drives for 500€ at most
The trick is to get the lightly used 12TB drives from the people who just upgraded to 20TB drives.
Good luck finding those in Europe. Second hand stuff is being sold here at almost new prices (or above new!). Been so many times that it was not worth buying second hand because the price difference was barely 5 a 10% vs New + 2 year warranty + 2week return.
Now do 18TB SSDs.
In the $300 range…
Even if they’re “only” SATA speeds, that would be such a game changer for a NAS