Storage Prices 2023-01

I did a survey of the cost of buying hard drives (of all sorts), microsd/sd, USB sticks, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and tape media (for tape drives).

I excluded used/refurbished options. Multi-packs (5 USB sticks) were excluded, except for optical media like CD-ROMs. Seagate drives were excluded because Seagate has a poor reputation.

Here are the 2023-01 resultshttps://za3k.com/archive/storage-2023-01.sc.txt

2022-07: https://za3k.com/archive/storage-2022-07.sc.txt
2020-01: https://za3k.com/archive/storage-2020-01.sc.txt
2019-07: https://za3k.com/archive/storage-2019-07.sc.txt
2018-10: https://za3k.com/archive/storage-2018-10.sc.txt
2018-06: https://za3k.com/archive/storage-2017-06.sc.txt
2018-01: https://za3k.com/archive/storage-2017-01.sc.txt

Per TB, the options are (from cheapest to most expensive):

  • Tape media (LTO-8) at $4.52/TB, but I recommend against it. A tape drive is about $1,600 (twice that new). That’s a breakeven at 150-300TB. Also, the world is down to one tape drive manufacturer, so you may end up screwed in the future.
  • 3.5″ internal spinning hard drives, at $15.00/TB. Currently the best option is 8TB drives.
  • Optical media, at $16.71/TB. 25GB blu-ray disks are cheapest.
  • 3.5″ external hard drives, at $17.75/TB. Currently the best option is 18TB drives.
  • 2.5″ portable spinning hard drives, at $22.00/TB. Currently the best option is 5TB drives.
  • SSD drives, at $42-$46/TB. Best option is 1TB.
  • USB sticks, at $59/TB. Best option is 128GB sticks.
  • MicroSD cards, at $62/TB. Best option is 512GB cards.

Changes since the last survey (4 months ago):

  • Amazon’s search improved. Less refurbished drives and sponsored listings.
  • Spinning drives: 22TB 3.5″ drives became available
  • Spinning drives: Prices for the previous cheapest option (4TB) rose, making 8TB the new cheap option.
  • SSDs: Prices dropped by about 30%.
  • MicroSD/SD: Prices dropped slightly.
  • Optical: The cheapest option (25GB blu-ray) dropped 30%.
  • Optical: I stopped gathering data on the cost of BR-RE
  • Tape: LTO-7 tape drives are now available used, halving the break-even point on tape.

2023 Flash media longevity testing (3 years later)

  • Year 0 – I filled 10 32-GB Kingston flash drives with random data.
  • Year 1 – Tested drive 1, zero bit rot. Re-wrote drive 1 with the same data.
  • Year 2 – Tested drive 2, zero bit rot. Re-tested drive 1, zero bit rot. Re-wrote drives 1-2 with the same data.
  • Year 3 – Tested drive 3, zero bit rot. Re-tested drives 1-2, zero bit rot. Re-wrote drives 1-3 with the same data.

This year they were stored in a box on my shelf.

Will report back in 1 more year when I test the fourth 🙂

Hack-A-Day: Hack-A-TV-Guide

It’s no longer november, but I’m still doing a project a day. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Yesterday’s project was Hack-A-TV-Guide (demo, source). It’s a TV Guide generated from Wikipedia. I got the idea from having written isrickandmortyout.com. Why not do the same thing, but for every show?

I’m going to call this one a flop. There’s a good version of this project, but I ran out of time. Basically all it does is display info about a show, which is not very useful.

Hack-A-Day: Hack-An-MMO

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

This is November 30th, so this will be the last project.

Today’s project is Hack-An-MMO (demo, source). It’s a small collaborative art RPG. You can draw people, places, and things to populate the tiny world. Have fun!

Hack-A-Day: Hack-A-Farm

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-A-Farm (demo, source). It’s a simple tile-based RPG. You can walk around as a chicken, admire your house, and plant and harvest two types of crops.

My main goal with this project was to work with spritesheets or animation before, which I had never done. Showing off the individual tiles is deliberate. Also, the game should respond well to smaller and larger screens, I hope.

I had a good time with this one, and I’m happy with how much I got done in a day. I originally planned to do more fluid walking (it was called Hack-A-Walk), but it was more fun to add crops instead.

I re-used some of the logic from Hack-A-Minigame and Hack-A-Snake. I’ve been finding d3 to be mildly useful, if a little annoying.

Hack-A-Day: Hack-A-Snake

It’s november, and I’ve decided this month that I’m going to do 30 projects in 30 days. It’s an all-month hack-a-thon!

Today’s project is Hack-A-Snake (demo, source). Yesterday I wrote a game where an AI plays snake. Today I thought, hey, I should release that with keyboard controls so people can just play Snake.