I did a survey of the cost of buying hard drives (of all sorts), CDs, DVDs, Blue-rays, and tape media (for tape drives).
Here are the 2020-01 results: 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
Changes this year
- I excluded Seagate drives (except where they’re the only drives in class)
- Amazon’s search got much worse, and they started having listings for refurbished drives
- Corrected paper archival density, added photographic film
- Added SSDs (both 2.5″ and M.2 formats)
- Prices did not go up or down significantly in the last 6 months.
Some conclusions that are useful to know
- The cheapest option is tape media, but tape reader/writers for LTO 6, 7, and 8 are very expensive.
- The second-cheapest option is to buy external hard drives, and then open the cases and take out the hard drives. This gives you reliable drives with no warrantee.
- Blu-ray and DVD are more expensive than buying hard drives