I recall paying around $1/gb in ~2006, and that was for a 5400rpm drive (and I’m sure the older members here will say something in the mb range). So while i agree, the rate we have come to expect value to increase isn’t continuing on that exponential curve we experienced the last 20 years, the prices are not expensive by any means.
If you’re talking mechanical drive prices, the best deal I’ve seen around are the wd easystores sold at Best Buy. When they go on sale for under 150 for the 8tb version, hard to beat that value. I filled my entire storinator up with them.
Can’t wait until ssds can compete with price/capacity.
2006 isn’t relevant to today’s market though. We can’t go back in time. Today’s businesses are built on data set sizes, compute loads and software footprints that in many couldn’t run on 2006 scale hardware at all. Unavailability of modern scale systems wouldn’t set back many businesses, it would kill them.
The biggest risk of supply shocks like this, even modest ones, is that businesses will decide to buy up supply early to avoid any problems getting it later. That further restricts supply for everyone else, driving prices even higher, and soon you have a ‘bank run’ on that resource choking off supply and making it unaffordable. This happened in the early 90s to RAM. A fire at a plastics factory for material used in RAM chip production created a run on RAM, even though in reality it wasn’t a threat to supply. The fear of a shortage created a shortage.
