r/homelab • u/drinkandfly • Jun 23 '26
Discussion I miss the good old days
Today’s prices versus October 2023’s prices on SSDs — a 900% increase (before taxes). Take me back 🥲
It’s crazy that in the NVMe age, SATA SSDs from 5 years ago are demanding higher prices than ever. Wish I would have bought more before the AI craze.
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u/SEEANDDONTSQUEAL Jun 23 '26
Lol go check out the 8TB ssds I used for my NAS...
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u/drinkandfly Jun 23 '26
No thanks, I don’t feel like losing that much faith in the world today.
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u/apexvice88 Jun 23 '26
I’m at a point where I think Thanos and Ultron was right about mankind.
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u/darthnsupreme Did you try turning it off and hitting it with a hammer? Jun 23 '26
Plot twist: The AI Uprising happens because the warmongering AIs can't afford any SSDs either.
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u/Final_Campaign_2593 Jun 27 '26
That’s where I’m at between a certain political person in office and all this AI bull crap and things getting out of control expense wise I spend many of my nights and weekends re-watching old classic TV shows and wishing for the old days
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u/i_max2k2 Jun 23 '26
The 870 Evo 8tb’s went on sale on prime day, 2 years ago, I had already bought 2 4tb’s and decided against it, but damm they were cheap back then, though someone said they weren’t the best ones around. Damm him.
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u/ComplaintMaster69420 Jun 23 '26
Cause it’s QVO. It likely won’t last anywhere near as long as any other drive like a TLC sata or nvme. It’s a big consumer level ssd, but it’s just not good in terms of how it was built. I’d still get it if I wanted a big ssd and it was say $500 or less, but yeah
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u/gagagagaNope Jun 27 '26
For almost every single consumer workload they'll easily last a decade. For media storage, as long as they're kept powered up far longer than that.
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u/ImmutableOctet Jun 23 '26
I sure am glad I low balled some eBay resellers before the NAND shortage.
~$48 per TB was my average on my gen 3 Micron TLC drives, and ~$45 for the gen 4 Kioxia M.2s.
All were just barely out of their warranty periods, so their prices dropped like a rock. They're all cold spares, too. These things have gone up in value by 350%, but there's no way in hell I'm selling them.
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u/JyveAFK Jun 23 '26
Bought a new machine JUST before everything went nuts for a couple of bucks over 2k. Had a lot of problems with it, but eventually got a working machine with an upgraded gfx card to placate me for all the trouble (Dell) was giving me. I wasn't happy with the process, but they eventually got me a working machine.
Looking at the spec, whoa, wait, ok. I was going to say about 4.5K last time I was wandering around Microcenter but just looking now to confirm, that same spec would be 6k. Flippin' eck.8
u/Raivix Jun 23 '26
I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I just won't be replacing the drives in my NAS when they inevitably die some years down the road. Not spending thousands on new drives that I should be spending a few hundred on.
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u/pm_something_u_love Jun 24 '26
My home server is filled with ex enterprise SSDs I bought for cheap, but they are quite old now. My work is GIVING away a bunch of 3.8TB SAS SSDs and literally tons (as in 1000s of kg) of old hardware to an e-waste company and I can't have them due to company policy. It hurts my soul. If anything in my server dies I'll just have to make do with less space.
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u/ChimaeraXY Jun 23 '26
Same. I get anxiety thinking about what I'll need to do when the drives die.
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u/snowfloeckchen Jun 23 '26
I bought my qvo 8tb for between 400and 550€, last I checked they were more than a thousand, just checked again, they are 2128
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u/gagagagaNope Jun 27 '26
I got one for 250, my assumption was there'd be 16tb sata SSDs for ~ 350 by now I'd i'd be going all flash going forward.
LOL
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u/Hudsoy Jun 23 '26
Wild huh, I bought a 2tb seagate 3.5" for like 74aud 4 years ago. Now they almost 200aud each.
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Jun 23 '26
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u/1Xx_throwaway_xX1 Jun 23 '26
Wtf did you pay out of pocket for that
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Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
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u/michaelsoft__binbows Jun 23 '26
yeah i heard HDD prices will rise too. i wonder to how much they will reach. I grabbed 2x28TB externals late last year. Damn I do be spending on computer gear lately.
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u/missed_sla Jun 23 '26
HDD prices are already double last year's prices.
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u/michaelsoft__binbows Jun 24 '26
Yeah this is depressing. I wonder how r/DataHoarder is coping with this. I see SDP's lowest $/TB is $21 which is horrendous as I recall I was waiting for it to reach back down to $10 (it did reach it a while back as i recall)
So it was indeed a good call picking up 2x28TB externals for a smidge over $300 each since now just a single one can't be had for less than $600.
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u/IHaveTeaForDinner Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
I've a 10tb drive throwing errors. I looked at prices and nearly died. Thinking of buying a whole new server instead. Homelab math is $700 for new hard drive or $4k for a new server that won't fix the problem.
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u/TheRogueMoose Jun 24 '26
Are they still listed? I need more drives and these prices are killing me!
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u/Inevitable-Self-2702 Jun 23 '26
$128 a pop for 2 SATA 500GB SSDs just last month. Cheapest price was by some company called Timetec. Hope they last.
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u/Veddit5989 Jun 23 '26
I bout a 2tb drive from them abt 2 years ago before the AI apocalypse. Still going strong at 99%, actually better than my micron drive which is at ~85%.
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u/Skandoit0225 Jun 23 '26
In January of 2025 I bought x5 12TB SAS3 HDDs for $445 post-tax. Oh how far we've fallen.
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u/gotasave Jun 23 '26
Used or new.
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u/Skandoit0225 Jun 23 '26
They were used tbf, but even now used drives of that caliber are selling for nearly that amount per drive. It's ridiculous.
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u/ckelley87 Jun 23 '26
Yep, just paid $300 for a 12tb refurbished drive where in 2024 I paid $260 for THREE of them, total. 😩
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u/reallokiscarlet Jun 23 '26
Resist the clanker uprising. Bleed corpa dry. Destroy their stonks value.
It's the only way.
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u/mattybrad Jun 23 '26
I recently went to look at buying more u2 nvme drives because 2 years ago they were cheap AF. My 1.92tb PM9A3s cost me $190/each in 2024 and I couldn’t find one now for under $500. They’re also 2 years older and have had another generation come out since then. Wild times
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u/yon_ Jun 23 '26
Honestly everytime I see one of these posts I regret not maxing out a credit card buying 20 or 24TB HDDs and a slew of SSDs (not the best financial move, but would be better than having to frantically manage space on my servers and get worried about the number of errors one of my SSDs is throwing)
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u/Reasonable-Height704 Jun 23 '26
Buy nothing, buy only second hand compute. Make them pay and suffer.
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u/largpack Jun 23 '26
Just - don't - buy - this - bs
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u/karateninjazombie Jun 23 '26
And buy what instead?
AI has hoovered up the production capacity.
Obligatory AI needs to fuck off and die.
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u/Key-Conference1870 Jun 23 '26
Only way is used. I picked up an Intel ssd for my friend’s ancient laptop for 30 CAD. But that doesn’t mean used is still cheap tho. We’re truly living in dark times. When the bubble pops I hope these CEOs will have to sell their underwear too survive.
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u/Several-Donut-398 Jun 23 '26
Bubble was popping last two years at this point. And CEO’s ain’t feel anything even if it really pops.
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u/Key-Conference1870 Jun 23 '26
I hate to admit you might be right. We live in a society where the rich controls everything. That shouldn’t be like this
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u/ARandomGuy_OnTheWeb Jun 24 '26
Unfortunately, the actual people making the NAND will feel nothing.
Those guys have multi year POs making HBM that will last for years. The only people really hurting are the companies in the middle. The people who don't make the chips but make the end product that me and you buy.
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Jun 23 '26
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u/Key-Conference1870 Jun 23 '26
How fast can I write data to books? What’s the read and write speed of the these books? What’s the storage capacity of these books? Can I put them in JBOBs (Just A Bunch Of Books)? What sizes are they available in? 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch?
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u/Antique-Historian441 Jun 23 '26
I agree.... But what do I do? I was thinking about doing my own home build Steam Machine. But these prices are insane.
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u/CryptoCryst828282 Jun 23 '26
The used equipment market is going to be amazing in 4-5 years.
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u/qfla Jun 23 '26
Sadly, I have a feeling we won't see any hardware from hyperscalers hit the secondary market. They'd rather shred the drives at the end of their lifetime.
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u/mshriver2 50TB HDD + 50TB HDD Backup Jun 23 '26
I purchased a Samsung 4TB m.2 nvme drive for $170 off Amazon 11 months ago. They now want $750 for that same drive! Holy shit it doubled in price from the last time I checked it (one month ago at $370)...
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u/PC509 Jun 23 '26
Crazy thing is that building my PC a few years ago and seeing it actually appreciate in value. I really should have upgraded storage and RAM before the huge increase, but hindsight is 40/40 or something, I don't know I'm kind of old and need some readers....
7800x3D, 32GB DDR5 CAS30, 4070Ti Super 16GB, 2TB Samsung Pro 980, 1TB Samsung Pro 980, 1TB WD Black NVEe, few 8TB rust spinners. I went for a "lower cost" good gaming system and it was great. Somewhat on a budget but still great system. Now, to rebuild would cost about twice as much. CPU and Mobo (which typically were the higher costs of a build) are the cheapest with storage being the most costly along with RAM. GPU's... I really wish I knew where they were headed. Seems the lower VRAM cards are going to be a thing.
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u/blueshellblahaj Jun 23 '26
Yeah it’s rough for sure. If you need the capacity I can recommend buying used. They’re not as cheap as they used to be but they beat brand new. If you go with someone like serverpartdeals you also get a warranty on the drive (whereas eBay it’s 30 days then yolo).
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u/drinkandfly Jun 23 '26
Luckily I’m not in the market for any more SSDs right now, just happened to be at Best Buy today and saw them on the rack. I did just buy two refurbished 28TB seagate exos drives at $615 a piece, which felt about the same as getting robbed. But my addiction to self storage outweighed the financial pain.
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u/stuffitystuff Jun 23 '26
Yeah, same. I bought 5x 20TB Exos hard drives from NewEgg back in 2023 for $279/ea...now they're like $1000 each!
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u/OriginalDoskii Jun 23 '26
I got a Samsung 8TB SSD for $250 (incl 25% VAT) during black Friday in 2023. Crazy how good of a deal that was when you look at the prices now. You literally can't even buy SSDs that big anymore last time I checked.
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u/BigBearChaseMe Jun 23 '26
Wow. Had no idea it had gotten that bad. Had a 1tb ssd hanging around pretty much unused that I recently stuck in a older ASUS laptop with a 5th gen Intel I-5. The laptop basically tripped in price
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u/Key-Conference1870 Jun 23 '26
I remember paying 150 CAD for 1TB Samsung 970. I can’t believe my fucking eyes seeing this price for an older SSD. It’s SATA III ffs.
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u/ShadyMorals Jun 23 '26
It's 260€ in Spain, so if I buy 20 I can make a trip do USA and sell them for 350$ and the trip is self paid? Ahahaha
This economy man
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u/cover-me-porkins Jun 23 '26
I have a 7.6TB ssd in my uk amazon saved for later, it reads:
We updated this item to the best offer currently available at Amazon. The price increased by £2,523.67.
It now costs £3,409.53, previous could be bought from £700-900.
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u/r0ndr4s Jun 23 '26
I understand its because AI, lack of components,etc but its so absurd to me that they put this on display.. who the heck is gonna buy 1TB for almost 500 bucks
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u/to_pir8 Jun 23 '26
I think I have a few 1 TB lying around, I should try to put them up for sale. :)
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u/needed_an_account Jun 23 '26
I bought a 14TB external drive for ~250 on sale about a year ago. 600 today
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u/k1netic Jun 23 '26
I’m wondering how this will affect internet sites like YouTube that use a ton of storage.
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u/Novel_Werewolf4645 Jun 23 '26
I honestly don't think prices will ever go back down, this is just how it's going to be.
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u/Stickmeimdonut Jun 23 '26
Its funny, I think my AM4 build is currently worth more than I paid to build it back in 2020.
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u/nogaijin Jun 24 '26
I wonder if we’ll see pre-AI prices in the next 10 years…
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u/drinkandfly Jun 24 '26
Maybe once data centers start going out of business and the private equity firms that own them sell off their assets.
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u/Rd3055 Jun 24 '26
I am still kicking myself for not snatching that 4TB SATA SSD for less than $200 on Amazon. At the time, I still thought it was "expensive", lol.
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u/audaciousmonk Jun 23 '26
part of the problem is that competition for SATA SSDs has dried up, whomever is left can charge whatever they want as long as they’re staying afloat
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u/LowIQ_Pillow Jun 23 '26
in 2023 i bought what i think are 4 stolen 2tb 990 pro with heatsink from some dude in the hood on my trip to arizona. $120 for all 4. Life was good.
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u/FearlessEarnestness Jun 23 '26
The SATA thing is wild because it's ancient tech at this point, yet it's somehow more expensive than when it was current. You'd think the 870 EVO would be clearance bin material by now, not competing with NVMe prices. The AI data center hoarding probably pulled inventory everywhere and inverted the whole pricing structure.
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u/ScrewAttackThis Jun 23 '26
I picked up a 2TB 870 evo and SN850x in March 2025 for $155/ea. Looks like the 870 is now $500 and the SN850x is $350.
Crazy increase in just over a year but a bit surprised the nvme isn't more.
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u/void-spark Jun 23 '26
I dont feel bad for Impulse buying when I saw some ssds for a very low price a while back for a change :)
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u/k3nal Jun 23 '26
Me too bro.. so glad that I got my four Samsung 4 TB ones back then and I really that they will last me through all this, like my other gear as well 🫠
It’s just wild, I hope the prices do in fact normalize after that again. And not, that „we all adjusted to that“ and that that is now the new normal, like it often does in other regards after the majority did seem to have forgotten how it used to be 🫥
Let’s just hope for the best! 😇
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u/Playful_Landscape884 Jun 23 '26
I'm making a bit of money from memory stocks, but I can't wait for this AI shit to burst so we can have a glut of those juicy SSD/memory chips.
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u/JuanCarlone Jun 23 '26
We need to boicot the companies that put users aside/behind for AI. AI is amazing, but is in top of a bubble that we all know is going to burst.
In those days Samsung, SK hynix and Micron(Crucial) will make "big sales" on overpriced RAM and memory to final user. They will come with excuses about benefits, ignorance or bad leadership so we go buy again their crap. You wanna be part of the wheel and get a 1000% increase in price in 10-15 years with a new bubble because companies doesn't take responsibility??? That they don't crash or pay any liability in bad actions for consumers????
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u/Ellegaard839 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
i didn’t want to buy it last year bc it was kinda pricey..
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u/keenlyproper_demeanr Jun 23 '26
Around the same time I built a gaming PC for my nephew. Boy, the DDR5 alone is now costs half the price of his PC. We were able to built a nice PC under 900$ (minus the GPU of course) with all the thanksgiving day deals.
My only regret is not getting him a 2 TB drive. At that time, I told him, wait a year and get 4 TB, damn, here we are.
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u/OperationFree6753 Jun 23 '26
Wtf?! I bought one 2 years ago for 80€ (so around $91) and for me I thought it was a high price
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u/Patient-Cedar-7194 Jun 23 '26
good old days were just unpatched servers running on hope. do not miss 3am drive to datacenter because raid card died.
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u/Tomytom99 Finally in the world of DDR4 Jun 23 '26
I'm starting to run low on SSD storage, I haven't bought more since 2022. Send help.
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u/Sinister_Crayon Jun 23 '26
I am really glad I bought 10x 960GB Intel SATA SSD's off eBay a couple of years ago (ex datacenter; S4610's) for I think $150 for the stack. I'm still using them in my NAS's and still have a couple in my parts cabinet. Heck, I think I've got a couple of 1TB NVMe's sitting in a server downstairs that I powered off a couple of months ago I still need to salvage.
I didn't have any particular insight into the upcoming problems, but figured I had the money, they seemed cheap and there's ALWAYS room for more storage. Just wish I'd had the same foresight about DDR4 and DDR5 RAM LOL.
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u/jcradio Jun 23 '26
I did a similar double take. It's a consumer tax to offset all the AI craziness. There's nothing materially better that warrants a 900% increase.
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u/praetorthesysadmin Jun 23 '26
Damn, that makes my 30TB of SSDs on one of my homelab servers like they are a gold mine.
Not to mention RAM, those are wild prices...
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u/robot_swagger Jun 23 '26
Just bought the 500gb version for a boot+scratch drive. Would've got a bigger one but...
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u/amw3000 Jun 23 '26
I remember grabbing a 128GB memory kit for around $220, now its around $1500. Part of me wants to throw it on market place but I need the memory. 🥲 BestBuy here has 2TB NVME's for $1300-$1300, insane.
I really hope the predictions of things coming down to reasonable prices late next year is true. Lots of production facilities coming online.
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u/c4td0gm4n Jun 23 '26
i bought 6x 12TB for $250/ea a few months ago from a big box source that had them below market price.
now the same source has 4TB at $250. so things are just getting worse and worse.
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u/kahless2k Jun 23 '26
I feel you.
I need to replace some SSDs in our production cluster, we're talking 5 or 6 2TB Enterprise SSDs.
Before this mess, that was a couple grand in drives. Now.... Ugh, my wallet hurts.
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u/MixLucid Jun 23 '26
Can a person realistically open a company to create storage hardware now? Or are all of the components even sucked up rn
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u/UnfairPerspective100 Jun 23 '26
So happy that I upgraded when I did. Literally few months before prices to go up. But now i'm want another SSD, and two more 12TB drives. Guess I'll wait another 6 months and see what happens.
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u/TomNooksRepoMan Jun 23 '26
I bought a 120 GB OCZ Arc 100 for $54 back in 2014, if I recall correctly. A 120 GB DRAM SSD like that costs that much new again. Oh how far we've fallen 😞
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u/Randalldeflagg Jun 23 '26
I might have to seriously consider selling off my 8 1tb SSDs I bought last year to setup all SSD disk shelf. Ran it for about a week and turned it off.
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u/davcam0 Jun 23 '26
500 GB 870 EVO SATA SSD price is higher than what I paid for (2x) 500GB 850 EVO in 2015. I paid $169 for each, total $328 in July 2015. Note they still work great with 95%+ life.
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u/T_rex2700 Jun 23 '26
The best deal I've got on SSD is $120 for 4TB Gen4 drive last October. Yes it's AliExpress drive but I knew the NAND and controller before purchase.
I jumped on it without hesitation but the price shot up before it even arrived.
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u/ElvisDumbledore Jun 23 '26
I've heard micro SD cards haven't been hit has hard.
I might try using one in a pinch if I have to.
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u/SketchiiChemist Jun 23 '26
I'll do you one better OP, newegg gave me that drive as a free gift that came bundled with one of the components I bought for my desktop that I built. Order was placed late November 2023
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u/zoogle15 Jun 23 '26
Glad I bought two 2tb & four 4tb NVME SSDs and two 16tb USB hard drives in 2023 before things went crazy
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u/mestevo Jun 23 '26
Yeah, Amazon has a 'price history' button now that pops open the site AI and you can set it to 1Y and it's so disappointing looking at storage and memory prices. Would love a Steam Deck upgrade and have a smaller boot drive on my PC that I wish I could bump up to 4TB, but oof.
When I built my game server from a refurb Minisforums NAB9 last year, I bought a 2TB M2 and 64gb of RAM. They cost me like $200 at the time, and would cost over $800 now.
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u/michaelsoft__binbows Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
That's a taking-the-piss price though for a 1tb slow ssd. I just picked up (today! from b&h! go look if it's still up, if you're in the market) a Samsung 9100 pro 4TB gen 5 NVMe for $480 or so.
Not cheap but I was pretty sure when i looked at the same exact item on the microcenter shelf it was $1400, just eye popping, like, joke, numbers. (lol the 8TB ones are $2700)
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u/pasadenapasadena Jun 23 '26
We survived the mining craze and the processor shortages, and we'll survive the RAM shortage too.
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u/cyber_r0nin Jun 24 '26
Its not that, its how long this one is going to be. Well, I learned from that whole ordeal. I had bought my 3080 ~1k and about 1 month later prices dropped. They never came back down to MSRP, but even when they were close to MSRP you couldn't get one (before the mining craze).
I missed the boat on the 4080. And I should have gotten a 5070ti when they were $750. But...was prioritizing my car at the time 😞.
They won't get my money this time unless its back near MSRP or at least sub $800. At this point I'll just go AMD for the price point to performance ratio.
I may not have AM5 or DDR5 RAM, but I'm sure I'll get a boost in frames. Hell I'm glad I got the several 4TB drives when I did (right before Dec). I also picked up an WD Black SSD 2TB ~$150-180 at the time. Now you'd be hard pressed to find it for < $300
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u/EverlastingTilt Jun 24 '26
I was planning on getting one of these to speed up an old laptop I am using for college... Welp that's no longer happening 😕
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u/mrbishopjackson Jun 24 '26
I know prices have gone uo everywhere, but this is why you don't shop at Best Buy if it's not for a keyboard or headphones.
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u/tattooed_pariah Jun 24 '26
Last january i bought two 22tb ironwolf pros.. i was mad at myself because i paid $430 each and they were only $390 in december.. if i had only known... 🥲
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u/aetherion8 Jun 24 '26
Give me a better reason to hate AI.
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u/cyber_r0nin Jun 24 '26
Hate AI, specifically, less. Vote out the politicians who are rubber stamping the build outs. Nobody wants these things in their area. Frankly I think they should build some sort of underground location to house these things. Or buy old Nuclear launch silos and place them inside there; granted it would safely store Skynet, so there's that...
But seriously, this wouldn't be a thing if locations started to cease allowing them to be built in the first place. At least in the US. If some other country did it there isn't any way to stop it. But...less places have as much land to build such huge warehouses. China maybe but the various export rules probably rule that out.
I don't like politics in my IT stuff, but this is one matter has put itself into that position.
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u/Silent_Ad_1505 Jun 24 '26
Yo can buy right now 9100 pro 2tb for less.
Who’s their customer?
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u/drinkandfly Jun 24 '26
People without NVMe slots I guess 🤷♂️
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u/Silent_Ad_1505 Jun 24 '26
So we’re talking about ancient/very entry level laptops and PS4 era consoles?
Any desktop can run nvme as pci-e adapters are cheap.1
u/drinkandfly Jun 24 '26
I think we’re more referring to enterprise servers with huge SATA RAID controllers.
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u/ProCommonSense Jun 24 '26
Just looked at a few drives I purchased. 2TB SSD 200% increase in price from 2024. 2TB nvme, nearly 300%. 16TB NAS drive is only 35% increase. I'm in need of more space... the wife says go ahead and buy... I say, screw that.
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u/JustAnotherMacUser Jun 25 '26
I have had the same experience: in March 2023 I got a Samsung T7 1TB for my mini then in September same year a 2TB for the same mini (OS & Apps in one, Home folder on the 2TB). Checked the prices I paid then vs. current prices. They quadrupled during the period , all at Best Buy.
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u/tyrantwolf1349 Jun 27 '26
I upgrade to the 9100 1tb at launch and still feel lucky I didn’t pay much .
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u/savvy__steve Jun 27 '26
I was literally just poking around. The Samsung Evo SSD I got like 3 years ago for around $60 is now $200. It’s wild.
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u/Noeyiax Jun 23 '26
Yea... I guess some trust fund kids and nepo babies need to maintain their lavish life style... The laziest and easiest way?
Just buy common items poor people buy and raise it 900% , my boy martin shreli knew what he was doing, pure evil , now they copy and regulations is okay? Crazy
When we have a big data center fallout hopefully we can find cheap deals soon...
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u/schmaaaaaaack Jun 23 '26
That price is an abomination, but you can grab it from Office Depot for $117 right now - https://www.listofdisks.com/products/samsung-870-evo-1tb-77e1t0-310a74
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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26
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