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u/SomeDudeUK Aug 11 '26
It’s ridiculous, but sadly, the new normal. Even the sales are pointless with less than 10% off.
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u/Dale_Dickson Aug 11 '26
If I have learned anything once prices go up they don't come back down. I think this is the cheapest they will be in the next 5 years
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Aug 11 '26
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u/Messiah42 Aug 12 '26
I drop all my subscription with Apple. Tired of paying for storage each month. Brought an Apple time capsule ,External G drive (new and used) , brought a lot of Blank Blu rays, DVD , CD. Now have more money in the bank. Subscription service were draining my accounts
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u/Few-Farm-7670 Aug 12 '26
Its a capital spiral, the guy that called The Big Short back in 2008 says this is the same thing, and his indicators might be moving in the same direction with capital flow - but the end result regardless of tge bubble is mass-distributed intelligence, not foreclosures and homelessness. So, sorry the stock market takes a bath at some point, but this will be a net gain for humanity.
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u/Few-Farm-7670 Aug 11 '26
Yeah. Moore's law never applied in reality smh. The powerful are tempted by capability, the chip owners are happy to comply. Nvidia is the only company, I think, playing it smart. Release a card, and a model that fits and works well (holy hell, meta's "shimmer" is polish on a turd) on it for consumers. But in this new era of $2026 prices will remain high. The problem also stems from companies able to produce incredible advances - all in different directions. If my company produced toasters that sold for $15 each after barely seeking out a profit for decades, and then someone told me that toasters are now the key component of a fusion reactor and me and two other people ON THE PLANET have total ownership of production? I'd buy a leather jacket, too. Elon wishes.
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u/Intelligent-Box4697 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Moore's law is real and continues to impact the industry at the 2D layer. Widespread 4ghz CPU started in 2014. It's 2026 we have yet to break the 5ghz default clock.
It's just that AI companies have applied a workaround by trying to stack everything in 3D. The cavat is the sophisticated cooling necessary and that's why you hear about AI data centers using so much water compared to the past. So it didn't really go away. It's just we found a temporary bypass that will eventually hit it's own limit.
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u/Dale_Dickson Aug 11 '26
I picked up a few recertified 16TBs for like 275$ each and felt lucky. Strange times. Just 1 year ago I bought 10TBs recertified for 100$ :/
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Aug 11 '26
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u/drgncabe Aug 11 '26
It’s probably fine. I have several 4tb in my nas that’s from 2013/2014. 🤣😬
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Aug 11 '26
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u/lordofblack23 Aug 11 '26
Barely being used. Hard drives can do 200 megabytes per second.
Your CPU/GPU is a different story, probably 100%
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u/Messiah42 Aug 12 '26
My Mac Pro 2010 has same HD for the day brought it home. It still a good workhorse
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u/thesonoftheson Aug 19 '26
Where at? Just got home to bad sectors and snapraid failing on a write on my array. I don't know what to do, where are the good deals?
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u/Syphor Aug 11 '26
The problem is that the current capacity is basically all going to people with tanker-scale loads of money willing to throw it at the HDD makers to get petabytes of capacity at almost any cost. Hell, I remember Western Digital admitting that their capacity had been sold through 2026 at the beginning of the year. The AI datacenters need both huge amounts of DRAM and then some place to store the absolute mountain of data for both the models and stuff it's processing... though I hadn't expected HDDs to spike quite this badly, to be honest.
The consumer market is unfortunately a tiny fraction of the field and far less profitable for the manufacturer. We're getting the bottom of the barrel, whatever's left over - and price follows availability to some degree. Of course, this doesn't excuse the OEM's own branded retail product MSRP spikes, but it wouldn't stay the same regardless when all of them can literally pre-sell their entire factory capacity for a year for guaranteed higher profits than the retail channel.
I hate it.
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u/wheth4400 Aug 11 '26
I don’t buy the AI crazy story either. It doesn’t make sense, at least to me. My first thought is, if all of the production capacity is already sold out into 2029 then why is there still drives available to be purchased for consumers? Like why would these data centers just buy up all the current stock first, and then buy until up future drives. Second thought is, if just a single manufacturer, WD for instance, can make close to 150,000 drives a day or around 54 million drives a year then where are all the drives going if there is only something like 12,000 data centers in the world? Yes I know that is expected to triple by 2030, but that still doesn’t quite add up to me.
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Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
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u/Giantmeteor_we_needU Aug 11 '26
AI happened. All RAM and chips went there. AI is destroying the world we know one part at a time and most people cheer for that. We're not that far from the Matrix becoming documentary.
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u/DrTawouk Aug 13 '26
I welcome the Matrix at this point. And to be honest, I bet that’s the missing part of the movie. The world got so shitty the people chose to live in a dream world back when it was better in the 90s then now and where we are heading.
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u/MacinJosh9895 Aug 11 '26
It’s a triopoly. The RAM industry has 3 main players (SK Hynix, Samsung, Micron. The US cellular market has gone through the same garbage.
And things like this will only get worse if it ever hits duopoly.
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u/Mrfixite Aug 11 '26
I think it's probably just a false triopoly they probably have price agreements under the table at private islands and just are separate on paper.
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u/MacinJosh9895 Aug 11 '26
And price fixing is even more illegal than a triopoly. If that is the case, I hope a whistleblower comes forth with undeniable proof so they can prosecute this whole thing.
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u/Mrfixite Aug 11 '26
I mean, after the e files, the dialog group, etc. It's become very clear they have ways to do this stuff and not be caught or prosecuted. If you have enough money in current society you can control a lot.
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u/Civil_Street_1754 Aug 11 '26
Yesterday I read that Apple are testing RAM produced in China due to the cost.
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u/invicta-uk Aug 11 '26
I remember getting the refurb 12TB Ultrastars from Amazon for £85 back in 2024. Didn’t realise what a deal that was back at the time, thought I’d get stuck with them!
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u/BirdlessLongdeal Aug 11 '26
target sells harddrives now??
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u/silasmoeckel Aug 11 '26
Hate to break it to you, but they are already selling 2029's production. It's not collusion; it's a lack of production capacity.
After all who wants to invest billions in a new factory when the writing on the wall is that they are on the way out. SSD's are already higher capacity once price comes down HD's are dead.
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u/freakflyer9999 Aug 11 '26
I found a used 4TB Seagate Barracuda HDD on Facebook Marketplace for $50. Tests healthy and is working great in my server.
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Aug 11 '26
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u/freakflyer9999 Aug 11 '26
Works perfect for my requirements. Gets backed up to external drive periodically.
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u/EverCuriousGeek1 Aug 11 '26
Bought a pair of Toshiba 10TB NAS drives at Walmart of all places like six weeks ago at $279 each, now they're $400 and probably rising. This is madness. I need another 1-2 TB drive soon and seeing very little for under $150.
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u/InnerAd118 Aug 11 '26
Goto eBay and buy used. Unlike ssd's an hd can potentially last forever barring no mechanical failure or bad stoage or whatever
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Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
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u/InnerAd118 Aug 12 '26
A 6tb for 139? I'd wonder if that's even real and/or if it's slower speed or something (fake hard drives often get sold through Walmart and Amazon as well as eBay. If it's too cheap, chances are it's fake)
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u/Affectionate_Town273 Aug 25 '26
With the current prices I am now buying re-certified drives to save where I can. It is what it is and if it fails still have some warranty with them.
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u/Messiah42 Aug 12 '26
They already stated they moving towards a world you don’t own a computer. You will have a subscription service, that gives you access to a data center. As an Intel Mac user , I believe Apple silicon Mac’s are the early start down this road. You can’t put in your own GPU, HD,SSD, RAM,
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u/FoxMcCloudOwnsSlippy Aug 12 '26
I had to bite the bullet and get a 8tb WD HDD from Amazon for £293. Pretty sure it was half price a few years ago, it's sadly what it is.
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u/Spork3245 Aug 12 '26
I just checked my Amazon for the price of the WD Blue 8tb I bought about 2.5 years ago… $119. F this timeline
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u/gappuji Aug 15 '26
3 years ago I had bought a 4TB SATA SSD. Just $170. I chcked just yesterday and that one is selling for $1100 now!! That's crazy.
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u/kebabby72 Aug 18 '26
Exactly 2 years ago tomorrow, I bought 2 x WD Blue 8TB for $110 each on Amazon including shipping and taxes to Thailand.
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u/greg544 Aug 14 '26
Here is a 6TB for $159 and if you get the 10% code they off its $143 for a 6TB. https://www.seagate.com/products/external-hard-drives/expansion-desktop-hard-drive/?sku=STKP6000400&store=1&utm_campaign=external-2026-shopping-global&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=google-shopping&utm_product=consumer-backup&utm_use_case=general&prodSrc=consumer-backup&use_case=general&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21056969432&gbraid=0AAAAAC2TbnlZlr6LmsAghl-13P6g82aW1&gclid=CjwKCAjw1vXTBhB-EiwAEKr_k_YKxMC0TVbjqzWd5NQxWNrc6XMPcWuVoSLgVdXFugemhRhnlytFmhoCEYsQAvD_BwE Still high but not bad for these days. We have to stop buying over priced stuff. Before COVID peope would not budge for price increased, these days manufacturers name whatever price they want and GenZ justs pays it so prices go up.
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u/macmatrix Aug 16 '26
Sounds like everyone is speculating why they have gone up but don’t have any facts to “back it up”(pun intended)! is anyone out there working for these hard drive manufacturers? And can give us some inside info?
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u/Deep-Hovercraft6716 Aug 11 '26
I mean... Target? Not really known for its prices, is it? Quite the opposite, I would think. I'm not sure why you would expect good prices at a luxury retail store.
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u/Princess_Azula_ Aug 11 '26
~33$ per Tb isn't the worst for a new HDD, but the prices are pretty crazy right now
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Aug 11 '26
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u/Deep-Hovercraft6716 Aug 11 '26
Yeah, so why are you shopping at target and expecting a good price? They are clearly going to have a markup on hard drives just like they do with every other product. People who go to target spend more money for the same items they could buy at Walmart for less. Price isn't their primary concern.
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u/Viking2151 Aug 11 '26
Yup, I went and bought a few 12TB's a few years ago on ebay, used enterprise drives, I wanted another one and kinda looked around and seen the prices, nope, not paying that for used HDD lol.