hard drive prices

Friday, March 13th, 2009
Bought a new hard drive today; a 1½ terabyte drive for $160. Thats only 10?¢ per gigabyte!

Scott showed me a site that says the first hard drive was $10,000 per megabyte! So over 50 years, the price of hard drive storage has dropped by a factor of a BILLION.

At this rate, by the year 2059, the lowest cost of storage should drop from the current cost of $100,000,000 per exabyte to 10¢.

Cost of storage vs DVD: BD=16x, CD=6½x, HD & DVD-DL=5x

Friday, May 30th, 2008
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¢/GigxDVD
Blu-ray DL25.0¢7.8x
CD20.5¢6½x
DVD DL11.0¢3½x
Blu-ray10.4¢3¼x
Hard disk8.9¢2.8x
DVD±R3.2¢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.

Media Costs

Friday, May 4th, 2007
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!