Thinking about upgrading your local home storage or perhaps replacing an older solution? Well, prepare for some sticker shock because it’s not just NAND or DRAM prices that have skyrocketed. While it’s well known that storage and memory manufacturers have been prioritizing data center client orders, it’s been a bit less covered that this extends to hard drives as well. The old magnetic platter format has come a long way in recent years with various technological advances that have improved speed, reliability, and storage capacities, but the days of it being a “cheap” storage option seem to have, at long last, passed.
At the start of 2026, one could go online to purchase a hefty 24TB external drive made by Seagate from Best Buy for a reasonable $279.99. Well, you can now toss that price out the window, into a river, and watch it wash out to sea, as that same model is now on sale at 10% off on Amazon for a staggering $649.41, and by the way, Best Buy no longer stocks it online.
This is a roughly 232% price hike in under twelve months, and if you believe this is a one-off, try checking out Newegg, where the original price point has now been applied to the 8TB model. Consumers are literally faced with paying the same price for 1/3 of the storage. Everyone has their favorites and will often have good reason to bash the brands they don’t like, so it should be noted that Western Digital has an 18TB external drive currently priced at $794.99, showing this is not a brand-specific pricing instance.
There have been stories circulating for some time that the ongoing component shortages have begun affecting consumer hard drive prices, and this includes both internal and external drives as well. What hasn’t been covered in greater detail is that they too are seeing prices increasing at similar rates to NAND / DRAM and now going for more than double since the year began. As mentioned, RIP the days of cheap storage options as nothing is cheap anymore.
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