Have Hard Drive Prices Come Down Yet?

Arsynic

Senior member
Jun 22, 2004
410
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Haven't bought a platter drive in a couple of years so I don't know what a normal price is. I saw a 500 GB drive for $90 on New Egg. Is that normal or still too high?
 

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
1 TB was ~$50 before the flood.

Right now a SSD makes more sense if you can get by with just 120 GB.
 

piasabird

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
17,168
60
91
I looked up my records on my last build and I paid like $47 for a 360gig HD. This time I paid like $92 for a 500Gig Drive just a couple weeks ago. I did not even bother with an SSD. I thought it was a waste of money to start just a little faster. If the govt would quit borrowing money maybe a dollar might buy something. I couldnt see buying one more gadget to put in my computer. Maybe Ill try one later if they come down in price.
 

Ausm

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
25,213
14
81
I looked up my records on my last build and I paid like $47 for a 360gig HD. This time I paid like $92 for a 500Gig Drive just a couple weeks ago. I did not even bother with an SSD. I thought it was a waste of money to start just a little faster. If the govt would quit borrowing money maybe a dollar might buy something. I couldnt see buying one more gadget to put in my computer. Maybe Ill try one later if they come down in price.

Once you try one, I don't think you will ever want to boot from a non SSD drive again. The boot up speed is amazing and also load times in FPS or any other games I play are blazzzingly fast. One caveat tho is you must have the proper mobo to utilize this speed.
 

jaydee

Diamond Member
May 6, 2000
4,500
3
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Last half-way decent deal I've seen on a HD was $100 for a 500GB Seagate XT hybrid drive. I think it expired yesterday though.
 

fixbsod

Senior member
Jan 25, 2012
415
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Yes it's all the governments fault that the damn weather caused those damn floods
 

mindless1

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2001
8,624
1,687
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Once you try one, I don't think you will ever want to boot from a non SSD drive again. The boot up speed is amazing and also load times in FPS or any other games I play are blazzzingly fast. One caveat tho is you must have the proper mobo to utilize this speed.

Even without the right board, SSD on SATA 1.5Gb/s is still far faster random I/O than a HDD. Even on ATA133 w/PATA-SATA bridge adapter.

I don't care much about the boot times though, people using SSDs are now getting boot times the same as the startup times I had with HDD on WinXP years ago by merely hibernating instead of full shutdown. In rare cases a full reboot is needed, there's always something I can find to do to keep busy.
 

BigInJapan

Member
Sep 22, 2005
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My last storage purchase was an SSD because a 750GB hard drive was the same price as a 120GB SSD. Made fiscal sense to me.
 

ElFenix

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Mar 20, 2000
102,389
8,547
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Even on ATA133 w/PATA-SATA bridge adapter.

i'm still trying to get a computer to work with that. might just get an sata card and see if that works. although spending a bunch of money for rather limited s&gs probably isn't the best idea considering how old my main box is getting.



drive prices have come down but they're still comparatively expensive.
 
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gmaster456

Golden Member
Sep 7, 2011
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I needed some 1tb drives but there's no way I'm paying the current prices for those.
 

wirednuts

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2007
7,121
4
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its pretty obvious they are capatilizing on the floods, and using the opportunity to push ssd's out.

but im not paying for an ssd until they hit the 50 cents a gig range at most, and i wont be buying any hdd's until i can get 2tb's for $60 again. the floods shouldnt effect prices for more then a year, and i can wait another 6 months. and if by then they still dont come down, then fuck hard drives i will just use cloud storage.
 

wirednuts

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2007
7,121
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They have gone down a bit. In the worst days after the flooding, 500GB drives were around $90, now you can get them for $70 if you're willing to look a little.

you can find refurbs for $55 shipped, but they are refurbs with basically no warranty.

we were just about to get rid of any size hdd under 1tb too... what a shame. no drives ever sold much under $50, but thats what you could get 1tb drives for on sale.
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
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www.mfenn.com
The "small monthly fee" really adds up. to store a terabyte of data on Amazon S3 costs $125 per month, iCloud is $166/mo, Google is $120/mo.
 

wirednuts

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2007
7,121
4
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:/ i never really looked into it. youre right, that is still too expensive. i was thinking about the $10 unlimited backup plans some companies offer, but i now realize that probably means you have to have a copy of that file on your computer already :D

then the hell with it. im busting out my 200 blank verbatim dvd's i didnt think i would ever use and just start dumping all the old stuff i want to keep but dont really use much. this is war, i am not paying 200% more for something just because corporations want to keep all eggs in one basket.

edit- i might go bluray though! ;) thats about 40 discs for around a dollar each to get about a TB of data archived. not really that bad
 
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mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
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One thing to watch out for with optical media is that it degrades over time. If you have anything really important, you'll want to burn it onto two different pieces of media from different lots and test it every so often (print out a text file with an md5 sum of the ISO image).