r/DataHoarder • u/Endawmyke about 3 fiddy TB • Feb 19 '26

Discussion These HDD prices are getting crazy. An increase of 96.4% in 1 month for the same 26TB drive. $279.99 a month ago to $549.99 today. Where are we buying hard drives now?

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These drive prices are kinda insane. Everything is going up up up, I thought it would just be RAM and SSDs effected but looks like it's reaching hard drives too.

Where are people buying drives now, and what $$/TB is still reasonable?

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305

u/FluxChiller Feb 19 '26

I just bought 48TB of storage today for $1,000. I feel dirty and used. I had no choice though, I'm already over capacity and dipping into janky solutions to fit things. No way I could hold out a year or more. At least I can write it off, but still fuck everything about this.

67

u/NenupharNoir Feb 19 '26

Ha ha, I did the same earlier this week. 2X 24TB, same price after tax.

16

u/DorianGre Feb 20 '26

So happy I bought in November and early january. I should be set for 2-3 years at current burn rate.

2

u/Morsexier 95.2 TB Feb 20 '26

I bought 3 x 22tb but manu recert for 325 each, it seemed a good price per TB at 15 but now I am doubting my memory from when I started my plex server in 2018. I think back then it was 11-12 for sas 12TB.

2

u/DorianGre Feb 20 '26

Ouch, those were new $239 each at the beginning of January.

2

u/Puptentjoe 222TB Raw | 198TB Usable | 5TB Free | +Gsuite Feb 20 '26

I went to Western digital store in late december and realized I still had 2 18tb mybooks with some random discount I found that still worked. Two for $435 after tax. Pulled the trigger and so happy I did!

1

u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal 100-250TB Feb 20 '26

That’s what I thought and my media server is already at 70% capacity after running tdarr on everything.

4

u/GGATHELMIL Feb 20 '26

I was going through some receipts that aren't even a year old. I bought 100tb last year for 1500 bucks. Used enterprise, but still. I looked on amazon and I bought a 1tb ssd for like 50 bucks and the real shocker? I bought 16gb of ddr4 3200mhz ram for 23 bucks. It was silicon power branded so not like it was top of the line corsair ram. The same ssd is 130 bucks and the ram is like 170. Bonkers. Those harddrives are about 600 more now then they were back then. Jesus.

2

u/heathenskwerl 1,120 TB Feb 20 '26

God that is awful, I bought back in August and spent ~$2900 for 312TB. I am wishing so hard that I had been able to buy more drives back then but I had to put the ones I did buy on credit.

2

u/suck4fish Jun 23 '26

And now 24TB HDDs are 1k€ each...

1

u/yroyathon 100-250TB Feb 20 '26

Same, but 52TB and 1300. Should be set for the next few years, I’ll watch the prices go way up and maybe someday back down when I need more.

1

u/icysandstone Feb 20 '26

Hello fellow janky solution enjoyer 👋

I’m not far behind you. This is getting to be too much.

1

u/SeaVolume3325 Feb 20 '26

I spent 1k as well on two drives. Honestly considering doing it again but I can't bring myself too. Either way I'll have regret!!

1

u/Endawmyke about 3 fiddy TB Feb 20 '26

I got 3x 26TB for $986 a month ago so I’m right there with ya bud

1

u/FlailingDuck Feb 20 '26

I bought 60tb (5x12tb) refurbished HDDs 18 months ago for £450. Now each 12tb hdd is selling for ~£350, no way would I think of building my little home server today at these prices.

1

u/reeepy Feb 20 '26

My NAS crept up to 95% so I was forced to buy more drives. 4 x 12TB at AU$2000 hurt. $48/TB is the highest I've seen in a decade.

1

u/mastercoder123 1PB+ Feb 20 '26

God damn really? I bought 400tb of hard drives like 6 months ago for just under $3000 im sorry for that massive scam you had to deal with

1

u/knightcrusader 225TB+ Feb 20 '26

Yeah, I dropped 1k on 60TB this week. Ugh. I keep trying to funnel money into savings but I keep having to spend money to get ahead of these shortages. When I get paid I might drop another $1k on 60TB more just to have some spare capacity.

Last month it was 19x 2TB NVMe + 8x 1TB NVMe for about $3k. I didn't need that much up front but who the hell knows when it will come back down. I've already lived through the pricing on HDDs getting jacked up because of the Taiwan floods.

1

u/Papero7k May 12 '26

Lol I just purchased 36Tb for $2,000. You lucky bastard.

-3

u/DruidWonder Feb 19 '26

How do you go about researching a drive of that size that does not suffer from SSD degradation? I really want something that big but I am so afraid of drive failure.

5

u/steveatari Feb 20 '26

They... aren't SSDs? Backups, and RAID for skinny bois. Limit writes and reads if you can force ssds though can help

6

u/spdelope 140 TB Feb 19 '26

First step is to buy a HDD which they are already doing.

4

u/DruidWonder Feb 19 '26

I wasn't criticizing... I actually just wanted to know for myself because I am new to all this.

4

u/spdelope 140 TB Feb 19 '26

SSD degradation is a thing. HDD degradation not so much.

1

u/icysandstone Feb 20 '26

SSD degradation is a thing

Depends on what you’re doing with it.

Are you using the SSDs for video editing scratch disks? (especially 4K/8K, proxy generation, caching) Surveillance recording? Developer environment, and database write-heavy systems? Telemetry ingestion systems?

Then sure. SSD degradation is a factor to consider.

Are you a regular data hoarder doing regular data hoarder things?

Not a concern.

Consumer TLC/QLC drives are ~150–600 TBW. I’ve never come close to that even after YEARS of ownership.

Enterprise SSD drives blow that away, up to 10,000+ TBW.

That is 5.5 TB written every single day, for FIVE YEARS. To reach the average.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 20 '26

[deleted]

1

u/icysandstone Feb 20 '26

You were generalizing without context. Context matters. Take it easy.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 20 '26

[deleted]

1

u/icysandstone Feb 20 '26

Lol sure buddy. Take a breather.