Storage Solutions Why are SSD prices going up?

gourav

Level H
I have been noticing that SSD prices keep climbing. I know there was one point where Samsung said they'll reduce production to stem the price fall. But prices keep going up even after the initial burst.

Just 6-7 months ago, 1 TB WD SN570 was available for ₹4300 on Amazon and went for as low as ₹4100 during sale. But now the equivalent SN580 costs ₹5700 on OnlySSD. And this is still among the cheaper options, unless you're willing to go for less popular brands like Teamgroup, eVM etc. Even Crucial P3 costs more than SN580.

I was lucky I bought a 1 TB P3 for 3950 in BBD sale, realising that these prices are not going to last.

Is there any organic reason for this or just manufacturers colluding and jacking up prices?
 
I have been noticing that SSD prices keep climbing. I know there was one point where Samsung said they'll reduce production to stem the price fall. But prices keep going up even after the initial burst.

Just 6-7 months ago, 1 TB WD SN570 was available for ₹4300 on Amazon and went for as low as ₹4100 during sale. But now the equivalent SN580 costs ₹5700 on OnlySSD. And this is still among the cheaper options, unless you're willing to go for less popular brands like Teamgroup, eVM etc. Even Crucial P3 costs more than SN580.

I was lucky I bought a 1 TB P3 for 3950 in BBD sale, realising that these prices are not going to last.

Is there any organic reason for this or just manufacturers colluding and jacking up prices?
 
i'd say inflation was supposed to catch up earlier but there was excess inventory. Now that the excess inventory has stabilised we will see price increases for some time. I remember few years back HDD prices were going down very fast and floods happened in Taiwan and hdd prices went up and stayed up for a long time.
 
Yup, I was eyeing sn570 nvme 500gb for 2500. Now I am going to order consistent sata 500gb for 2500. I can find SSD 500gb below 2500.

Even 128g is not less than 1k.
 
Not only that. The war by Houthi's on shipping in the Mediterranean sea will increase prices of everything. Does not matter if we are before or after that sea route. Shipper's got chance to increase prices on containers by 1000% and they took it. It was already high during covid times and now it will go even higher.
 
Sad.

Hope prices will come down again at some point. But I guess 5000 for 1 TB would be a good place to set the expectations at. Seems unlikely to go below that.

I still remember buying a 1 TB HDD for ₹2750 around 2010 right before HDD prices spiked. The lowest I've seen them go since then is 3k and now they're again back to 4k levels.
 
Now I am going to order consistent sata 500gb for 2500.
Drop the idea immediately, consistent ssd are some of the most inconsistent ssd available (no pun intended) with various cases of sudden death. Get crucial BX500 instead.
I still remember buying a 1 TB HDD for ₹2750 around 2010 right before HDD prices spiked. The lowest I've seen them go since then is 3k and now they're again back to 4k levels.
HDD prices will now remain higher as the only 3 remaining hdd manufacturers have decided to focus on large capacity (8TB & above) enterprise class segment for profits.
 
Brooo, don't say that, I just ordered it. Are you sure? Is it that bad?
Yes it is, I only know 2 guys having purchased consistent ssd & one of them already has his ssd failed 2 times in 2 years. Maybe you won't be that unlucky but I would rather take 3 years warranty crucial BX500 with much less chances of making a trip to service centre than a consistent ssd with 5 years warranty in which I make a trip to the service centre every year.
 
HDD prices will now remain higher as the only 3 remaining hdd manufacturers have decided to focus on large capacity (8TB & above) enterprise class segment for profits.
Honestly, I hope that higher capacity drives become cheaper in terms of price/TB, or 2nd hand market booms more in India. I know, not a great idea to buy 2nd hand HDDs, but I got 20 TB worth of HDDs like that for ₹5K years ago, and they're ticking along fine for now!
 
Honestly, I hope that higher capacity drives become cheaper in terms of price/TB, or 2nd hand market booms more in India. I know, not a great idea to buy 2nd hand HDDs, but I got 20 TB worth of HDDs like that for ₹5K years ago, and they're ticking along fine for now!
Where (& which models) you were able to get 20TB HDDs for 5k in India? India will likely never have a good 2nd hand market for HDDs because of low supply & low demand. Also, enterprise customers don't mind paying more for a large capacity drive so for retail customers it typically means price increase only as they don't care for a cheaper 22TB drive in terms of per TB cost but costing much more than a 10TB drive which is now even costlier than before.
 
Where (& which models) you were able to get 20TB HDDs for 5k in India? India will likely never have a good 2nd hand market for HDDs because of low supply & low demand.
Many Seagate Barracuda, and some IronWolf drives. All are 2TB ones, and all are 2nd hand. Somebody was clearing their business out and was about to throw them, so I purchased it instead. Right now, they're at a home server while I'm outside, accessing it like a NAS.
 
“20 TB worth of HDDs”. I meant my total capacity was 20 TB, not that each HDD was high-capacity. Sorry.
I doubt anyone would sell 20 TB HDDs for 2nd hand, though. Only bigger businesses could, but I don't have any such sources.
But you would need special motherboard or additional hardware for running these many 2 TB drives, no?
Do you mind sharing a bit regarding how are you using these 10 drives to get the combined space of 20 TB?
 
But you would need special motherboard or additional hardware for running these many 2 TB drives, no?
Do you mind sharing a bit regarding how are you using these 10 drives to get the combined space of 20 TB?
Sure. The backstory is quite simple. The one who was closing the store was not selling just the hard disks. The motherboard had 6 SATA ports, and he had an LSI card too, that supported 2 Mini-SAS cables. So I got 4×2=8 more SATA connections through that. Currently, I'm using all 8 of the LSI and 2 of the motherboard (since out of the 6, only 3 are SATA 6Gbps I think). I think the motherboard or the LSI card also supports staggered start of the hard drives, since all 8 don't spin up at the same time. As for the motherboard itself, it's an old ASUS CSI model I think. Runs core-i3. I did add an 8 GB DDR3 RAM from EVM (it had come with Corsair 8 GB preinstalled), since the Corsair Vengenance one, or rather any good DDR3 ones were not available. I did google it, and seems like ServerBasket also has LSI cards, but they're expensive at ₹6K for one of the cheaper ones.


As for the storage part, I'm running Proxmox + custom software for NAS running MergerFS on it. There's a separate Jellyfin server, which is what I mostly access from outside. I wanted to run TrueNAS, but that doesn't sound nice for a system with just 16 GB RAM. RAID is also out of the option since that would require too much parity calculation for the core i3 system. So I just union'd the system, with backups for important files taken manually. Most of it is just media and me testing out databases/migrations for other things, so I don't mind really. Oh, also CCTV footage is backed up/transferred to it via Hiksvision's software, so that's a nice bonus too.

The storage is not enough for me, but it's not bad enough that I'd feel like I have to upgrade. I do backup my important files since I'm scared that the 2nd hand drives might just die someday. I run other software on it too, but it's a bit too easy to run into out-of-memory issues lol


That said, if I were to start over, I'd go with high-capacity drives if my budget allowed, and perhaps I'd try running btrfs or TrueNAS instead of the custom solution that I'm rolling right now.
 
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