The Price And Type Of Storage Offered For Consumers Is Cartel/Collusion Level
Posted by techtimee@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 3 comments
I'm in need of more storage for my system as while I have a 12TB HDD, it is getting full and it's not the best for writing things too that need frequent access.
So, I headed online and began looking up prices. Lo and behold, in the year of our Lord and saviour, 2025, this is still a scam. Even SATA SSDs are several hundred for 3TB+, I mean, literally in the 1TB/$100 range. NVME drives are even worse with anything over 4TB being non existent except for 8TB+, which are all $1000+.
Can someone please explain how this is still going on? For years and years we have have heard about cost/TB going down, this and that technology progress in density, etc. But it's still rather extortionist the prices I'm seeing. What's going on with this and memory industry? It's like they're forever expensive regardless of decade.
Vushivushi@reddit
End of an supply glut, rate of improvement slowing, Samsung missing at the leading edge NAND, sanctions prevented YMTC engaging in a race to the bottom, weak demand hindering capacity growth.
Yup, it's kinda stagnating. Smartphone and PC sales stopped growing. Server spend shifted away from storage and towards compute and DRAM. There's no demand to trigger the upcycle (Where prices get worse before they get better as memory makers compete to ramp on new tech and overshoot demand leading into a down cycle).
Nothing is really happening right now.
I think AI is gonna need storage too, but when that comes, who knows?
Strazdas1@reddit
Memory density has stopped scaling. They are doing staircase layering on top of each other but thats a diminishing returns gain. Going beyond TLC into QLC leaves performace so bad you may as well be using a HDD instead. So you are stuck with stagnated tech at stagnated price.
ParanoidalRaindrop@reddit
I can order a quality 8TB PCI-E 4 drive for 650$ rn and it's only that high because the USD is so low right now. A year ago that would have been more like 550$.
So as far as i am concerned, prices are okay.