Now hard drive prices are stupid

[MrFancyPants]

So I just placed one of my final orders for my new Ryzen PC desktop build, using mostly SSDs but figured I'd check to see if there are any good deals on platter drives for long term storage (like I don't have a ton already), and holy hell! Now 12 TB drives are starting at around $460, and that's for internal drives. OK that's idiotic, let me check 8 TB drives...the cheapest Seagate drive is currently $200 on Newegg, WD and other brands are $250 and up. I purchased my latest 12 TB WD external drive last November for $175, now the exact same drive is listed at $340! Man this whole chip shortage is really stretching out to affect the entire industry. That or this is just the beginning of the ugliness that is inflation and the worthlessness of the US dollar.

It used to be that storage was cheap. Seems that won't be the case for awhile. I've got a ton of storage drives, fortunately, but I guess I won't be adding any more any time soon, not at these prices.

Update* Well it looks like crypto is also responsible for this. I did some research and it looks like the rush to set up Chia coin plotting on platter drives is a contributing factor. A coworker mentioned Chia to me a few weeks ago, but I tuned it out. Since I have a **** ton of hard drive space maybe I should reconsider.

[the86d]

Hmm, I have never priced anything over a 1TB in the platter variety, as I stream all my pr0n viewing.

The prices for 1TB is the same as it was, last I checked (2-3 years ago)...

On Newegg... 1TB and 512GB 970 Pro 2-bit MLC NVMe's are about the same price they were 2-3 years ago, even though they are now publicly traded, which I wouldn't have thought.

[bigmike82]

Yup, it's Chia's fault. It's very speculatory right now.

[MrFancyPants]

On Newegg... 1TB and 512GB 970 Pro 2-bit MLC NVMe's are about the same price they were 2-3 years ago, even though they are now publicly traded, which I wouldn't have thought.

Yeah, SSDs seem to be unaffected, it seems to be isolated to the larger capacity spindles. I ordered a 1 TB Gen 4 M.2 drive for my new build and it was normal price. It's just really funny (in a not funny way) that all of the sudden spinning drives are in excessively high demand again. There are people selling drives on eBay with Chia plots already set up, for insane prices. Of course there's no shortage of people who are willing to spend the money.

[RickyRacer87]

price are low

Well if you have been around for a long time there is nothing high about the prices of any hard drives... I still have a memory of purchasing a 340 meg drive and that was huge (and yes I said Meg) I paid $340 and that was the best price I had ever seen per meg for a hard drive...
So no matter how high they get they will always be cheap to me.

[sonofeugene]

If your going to spend money on a regular hard drive, make it an enterprise class drive. It will be more rugged and last longer.

[jk698]

SSD are much better and faster but nowadays the price just keep increasing

[SanDiego619]

Hot dang I had no idea prices were that cheap now, or that drives that large even existed. 8TB? 12TB!!?? When I got my SSDs (NVMe) it was about 100 a gig. Crazy how fast stuff advances, just a few years and drives are way bigger and cheaper.

[xfer42]

I bought a Seagate 8TB drive back in 2019 for $157. I stuffed it in a 12 bay, 2U supermicro chassis with a SAS2 backplane (SATA compatible). The idea was to have it hold a bunch of VMs (Linux KVM). It failed...sorta. Later found out it was a SMR drive, thats where they overlap tracks to pack in more data. SMART info said it was all good, but I could not fill the drive as it would just time out. I used dd if=/dev/urandom in an attempt to fill it. For those that are unfamiliar, "dd" allows you to write raw data to a device and /dev/urandom is an unlimited source of random data.

Anyways, I knew nothing of SMR drives before then. When I went back and looked at the reviews, it was flooded with similar problems. So if you are looking at magnetic drives, SMR=BAD, CMR=good. SMR is cheaper because it sucks.

[ibanezfoo]

I dunno where you are seeing these high prices... 1TB NVMe drives are around 100 bucks... thats cheap.

8TB for $300 is not bad. Thats a lot of data to backup though...

[TOMBSTONE]

Sam's Club & Costco has hard drives for decent prices , since Fry's is out-of -business...

[MrFancyPants]

I dunno where you are seeing these high prices... 1TB NVMe drives are around 100 bucks... thats cheap.

8TB for $300 is not bad. Thats a lot of data to backup though...

I wasn't talking about SSDs, was talking about platters. SSDs were not being hoarded for Chia seeding so their price remained stable. 8 TB for $300 is garbage, and you'd be crazy to pay that. 9 months ago I bought a 12 TB external hard drive for $175, today the exact same drive is $100 more expensive. When have you known the price of platter drives to INCREASE over time? As I said before though it's due to the PoS crypto seeding trend now. I need to fill up my 16-bay NAS with platters at some point, but at these prices I guess it'll be awhile.

[xfer42]

Check the model to see what type of drive it is (CMR or SMR). There was a class action lawsuit against WD for not disclosing some of their Red drives were SMR. I got burned on a Seagate SMR drive. They become extremely slow as they fill up since they overlap tracks and have to rewrite parts that were overwritten.

https://www.pcgamer.com/wd-rebrands-its-red-hard-drives-after-getting-hit-with-a-lawsuit/

[keepitlow]

Check with Reddit's 'Data Hoarders' they are up on all that stuff.

Yes, they complain about crypto / HD prices too.

M-Disc also skyrocketed. From $241 to $298 for 25 100GB discs.

[Scratch705]

is its still worth it to buy hard disk over SSD?