Tech Tok

Media Prices for 2010

Media	¢/GB	/DVD
DVD-R	3.4¢	1.0 x
DVD+R DL	6.9¢	2.0 x
1.5 TB HD	7.5¢	2.2 x
BD-R	8.0¢	2.4 x
CD	19¢	5.6 x
BD-R DL	22¢	6.4 x
BD-RE DL	40¢	12.0 x

It’s plain to see that HD and Blu-ray are neck-and-neck, with Blu-ray changing price the most dramatically. It may be that Blu-ray will take the price/GB lead from hard drives by summer.

Woo, there’s a new WD Passport drive (the drives we use at gaming on Friday nights), and not only is this one bigger (500 GB), but it also sports a FireWire 800 port. It’s called the Passport Studio.

Also new from Western Digital is an HD Media Player. [buy.com link]

Alas, Costco Canada doesn’t seem to have any of this new WD stuff yet.

Just a quick followup note from a thread I did on Twitter yesterday on the prices of a Gigabyte of storage on various media.

DVD’s are still the king at just over 3¢ per gig:

Kind	¢/Gig	xDVD
Blu-ray DL	25.0¢	7.8x
CD	20.5¢	6½x
DVD DL	11.0¢	3½x
Blu-ray	10.4¢	3¼x
Hard disk	8.9¢	2.8x
DVD±R	3.2¢	1x

I find the dual-layer DVD vs hard drive equivalence fascinating, especially after talking with Iain yesterday about the eSATA ports on my Mac Pro’s motherboard.

Sources for prices are Canada Computers and Fortune Computers.

Update: per my comment below, DVD-DL updated from 17¢/GB (5x) to 11¢/GB (3½x).

Update: per another comment, Blu-ray updated from 51¢/GB (16x) to 20¢/GB (6½x).

Update: another comment: Blu-ray updated from 20¢/GB (16x) to 12¢/GB (3¾x).

Update 2009-09-09: another comment: Blu-ray updated from 12¢/GB (16x) to 10.¢/GB (3¼x), added Blu-ray DL. Also updated hard disk from 17¢/GB to 8.9¢/GB as per current prices of 1.5 TB drives.

Just touching base with how much various blank media cost, in $/GB. This is from a April 26, 2007 flyer from Canada Computers.

Media Cost in $$/GB
	GB	cost	$$/GB	count
CD-R	0.7	$23.51	$0.69	50
DVD±R	4.4	$14.70	$0.07	50
DVD+R DL	8	$6.90	$0.43	2
DVD-R DL	8	$16.65	$0.69	3
HD DVD-R	15	$13.00	$0.87	1
BD-R	25	$14.50	$0.58	1

Harald contributed the prices below

Hard Drives (NCIX):
hard drive	GB	cost	$$/GB
	80	$66.98	$0.84
	160	$79.44	$0.50
	250	$100.93	$0.40
	320	$109.25	$0.34
	400	$165.21	$0.41
	500	$183.12	$0.37
	750	$381.43	$0.51

Harald says:The sweet spot seems to be 320Gb, and I notice
that all of the higher density medias are more expensive…

However, Iain pointed out that there are cheaper hard drives
online, so I skagged* the prices below from Canada Computers
today (Mon May 7 2007) and sorted them in order of drive capacity.

* is too a word

manufacturer	GB	cost	$$/GB
Western Digital	36	** $133.00	$3.69
Western Digital	74	** $180.00	$2.43
Hitachi	80	$54.00	$0.68
Seagate	80	$53.00	$0.66
Western Digital	80	$51.00	$0.64
Western Digital	150	** $270.00	$1.80
Hitachi	160	$69.00	$0.43
Seagate	160	$66.00	$0.41
Western Digital	160	$66.00	$0.41
Hitachi	250	$88.00	$0.35
Seagate	250	$85.00	$0.34
Western Digital	250	$78.00	$0.31
Hitachi	320	$110.00	$0.34
Seagate	320	$98.00	$0.31
Western Digital	320	$102.00	$0.32
Western Digital	400	$138.00	$0.35
Western Digital	400	$146.00	$0.37
Hitachi	500	$186.00	$0.37
Maxtor	500	$140.00	$0.28
Seagate	500	$162.00	$0.32
Western Digital	500	$143.00	$0.29
Western Digital	500	$200.00	$0.40
Seagate	750	$306.00	$0.41

** - obviously, some of these higher-priced models have other features like speed.

But wait, I hear you say, what about Flash drives?

brand	GB	cost	$$/GB	read (MB/s)	write (MB/s)
Kingston	0.5	$10	$20.00
Kingston	0.5	$11	$22.00
Kingston	0.5	$14	$28.90
Kingston	1	$14	$14.00
Kingston	1	$17	$17.00
Kingston	1	$18	$18.00
Corsair	1	$20	$20.00	19	13
Kingston	1	$21	$21.00
Kingston	1	$21	$21.00
OCZ	1	$23	$23.00
Transcend	1	$25	$25.00
Kingston	1	$28	$28.00
Kingston	2	$24	$12.00
Kingston	2	$26	$13.13
OCZ	2	$27	$13.50
Transcend	2	$29	$14.50
Corsair	2	$30	$15.00	19	13
Kingston	2	$33	$16.50
Kingston	2	$34	$17.00
OCZ	2	$35	$17.50	25	17
Transcend	2	$37	$18.50
Transcend	2	$37	$18.50
Corsair	2	$38	$19.00	34	28
Kingston	2	$59	$29.50
Kingston	4	$49	$12.25
Corsair	4	$50	$12.50	19	13
Transcend	4	$54	$13.50
OCZ	4	$58	$14.50	25	17
Transcend	4	$59	$14.75
Corsair	4	$60	$15.00	34	28
Transcend	4	$65	$16.25
Corsair	4	$70	$17.50	19	13
OCZ	8	$95	$11.88
OCZ	8	$104	$13.00
Transcend	8	$110	$13.75
Corsair	8	$111	$13.88	31	12
Corsair	8	$120	$15.00	34	28
Transcend	8	$125	$15.63
Corsair	8	$148	$18.50	34	28
Corsair	16	$175	$10.94	22	5.5

So we see costs per gig of 7¢ for DVD’s, 28¢ for hard drives, and a whopping $11 for flash drives!