How much is hard drive
Hard Drive Cost - In 2022
Hard disks have long been the most reliable data storage solution, offering ever-increasing storage capacities but also working speeds that keep up with the latest computing technologies, being also the basic layer of the Internet by supporting the huge amount of data that is generated and transferred daily on the Internet and in the cloud.
Internet users: Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Youtube, Instagram, email, and other applications, generate an average of 2.5 billion GB of data daily that would require over one million 2TB hard drives for storage, every day. There is no doubt that HDDs are best suited for this task, having no rival when it comes to the price per gigabyte of information and the versatility they offer.
How Much Does a Hard Drive Cost?
The Hard Drive cost is influenced by many factors including the type, the capacity, where you buy it from, the device, and the brand. For instance, you will have to pay anywhere between $110 and $170 for a 1TB HDD hard drive which can be connected to a USB port. Also, the price of an internal HDD hard drive of the same capacity which can be connected using a SATA cable inside the computer starts at $90 and goes up to $180. But, for an HDD hard drive with a capacity of 2TB, you will pay around $220.
Expect to pay anywhere between $65 and $155 for an internal HDD hard drive with a capacity of 1TB, while for an internal HDD hard drive with a capacity of 500-gigabytes you will pay anywhere between $45 and $70. As the capacity is smaller the price decreases. For example, a 250-gigabyte HDD internal hard drive cost anywhere between $40 and $60.
When comparing the prices of laptop hard drives with the rest, usually these will be similar to those for desktop computers.
You might also like our articles about the cost of a laptop, Mac, or the cost to have your PC repaired.
For an SSD drive, that is faster at writing data than the traditional HDD drive, you will pay anywhere between $95 and $150 for a drive with a capacity of 250 to 500 gigabytes.
Depending on the brand and capacity, the price of a portable hard drive, that can be moved from one computer to another, starts at around $80 and goes up to $210.
Also, depending on the capacity, for a hard drive designated for a gaming console like the Xbox 360 you will pay anywhere between $25 and $55. For example, the PlayStation 3 HDD can be purchased for almost $35. It must be said that the majority of these hard drives have to be bought used because the console is outdated.
Surprisingly, the price of a MacBook hard drive will be cheaper than the one used for a Windows-based computer. The majority of the MacBook hard drives with a capacity of 500GB cost $65 to $90. For example, for a 1TB iMac hard drive replacement you will pay $160 to $210.
Hard drive details
The form factor is the size of the hard disk. There are two form factors: 2.5 inches and 3.
5 inches. 2.5-inch hard drives are more compact. They are designed to be used in laptops. You don’t have to buy a 2.5-inch hard drive to install it on your regular computer. 3.5-inch models are suitable for regular computers. They are faster, more reliable, and have a higher capacity at the same price.
The internal hard disk drive is designed to work inside the CPU. We can remove an internal hard drive from the central hard drive and connect it to another compatible drive, but this is not a practical solution as hard drives are shock-sensitive devices. External hard drives are available for transferring large amounts of data and for portability. They encapsulate an ordinary 3.5 or 2.5-inch hard drive in a box and are usually made of metal or even plastic.
Older hard drives used the IDE port to connect to the computer’s motherboard, but now most modern types of hard drives use the SATA interface. The latest version of SATA, called SATA III, is found on the latest motherboards and unlocks the fastest data transfer for an HDD.
Discs with speeds of 5400 rpm, 5900 rpm, 7200 rpm, and 10000 rpm are available today. If you do not know how to choose a hard drive, buy a model with a speed of 7200 rpm (rotations per minute). It is the best option. These disks are ideal for installing operating systems, programs, and games. Hard disks with a speed of 10,000 rpm are very fast, but they have a pretty high price. And at the same time, they do not stand out for their large capacity. These disks are used for specific tasks and are rarely used on home computers.
An SSD drive is the newest generation of storage used in computers. As the name suggests, an SSD drive has no moving parts. This type of device wants to replace the traditional mechanical hard drive with a flash memory (NAND), which is significantly faster and much quieter. The more NAND memory chips are there, the greater the storage capacity of the SSD.
What are the extra costs?
In case you need a professional to replace or install your hard drive be prepared to pay anywhere between $20 and $65.
Also, in case you need to restore data from a hard drive, it would cost around $1.25 per GB.
Important things to consider
Hard disk capacity is measured in GB (gigabytes). (40 GB, 80 GB, 120 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB, etc.) Currently, there are hard drives of up to 15000 GB. That is 15 TB (15 terabytes).
If you need 4 terabytes of storage, then you better buy two 2 terabytes hard drives. This will save you money and reduce the risk of losing all your data at once.
Currently, most external HDDs and external SSDs connect through the USB port. Avoid USB 2.0 drives, which transfer data at 25-30 MB/second, and instead choose USB 3.0 drives, which offer speeds of up to 100 MB/second.
If you use an Apple product, you can also choose an external storage device with a Thunderbolt 3 port, which was later integrated into the USB-C port. This type of port offers speeds of up to 40 Gbps, so it is 8 times faster than USB 3.0.
Compared to an HDD, SSDs are much faster, with transfer speeds even 10 times faster, very short access time, low power consumption – only 2-3 watts, have no disks or mechanical elements which move, are silent, but the price-per-capacity ratio is higher, along with their quality.
Therefore, if you have to choose between a hard drive and an SSD, you need to know first what your priorities are.
Top brands to consider
- Seagate
- HP
- Western Digital
- Maxtor
- LaCie
How can I save money?
Take into consideration looking for promotions and discounts offered by online retailers.
In case you need a specific type of hard drive, use Google Shopping to compare prices offered my multiple shops.
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Alec Pow
Alec Pow is a thorough and methodical Financial and Business Analyst with over 15 years of experience in financial statement analysis, Foreign exchange derivative hedging instruments analysis, modeling, and risk management, with a long history of writing for big news publications like Forbes, MSN.com, Washington Post, and many more.
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The Cost of Hard Drives Over Time
by Andy Klein // 68 Comments
For hard drive prices, the race to zero is over: Nobody won.
For the past 35+ years or so, hard drives prices have dropped from around $500,000 per gigabyte in 1981 to less than $0.03 per gigabyte today. This includes the period of the Thailand drive crisis in 2012 that spiked hard drive prices. Matthew Komorowski has done an admirable job of documenting the hard drive price curve through March 2014 and we’d like to fill in the blanks with our own drive purchase data to complete the picture. As you’ll see, the hard drive pricing curve has flattened out.
75,000 New Hard Drives
We first looked at the cost per gigabyte of a hard drive in 2013 when we examined the effects of the Thailand Drive crisis on our business. When we wrote that post, the cost per gigabyte for a 4TB hard drive was about $0.04 per gigabyte. Since then 5TB, 6TB, 8TB and, recently, 10TB hard drives have been introduced, and during that period we have purchased nearly 75,000 drives. Below is a chart by size of the drives we purchased since that last report in 2013.
Observations
- We purchase drives in bulk, thousands at a time.
The price you might get at Costco or BestBuy or on Amazon will most likely be higher. - The effect of the Thailand drive crisis is clearly seen from October 2011 through mid-2013.
The 4TB Drive Enigma
Up through the 4TB drive models, the cost per gigabyte of a larger sized drive always became less than the smaller sized drives. In other words, the cost per gigabyte of a 2TB drive was less than that of a 1TB drive resulting in higher density at a lower cost per gigabyte. This changed with the introduction of 6TB and 8TB drives, especially as it relates to the 4TB drives. As you can see in the chart above, the cost per gigabyte of the 6TB drives did not fall below that of the 4TB drives. You can also observe that the 8TB drives are just approaching the cost per gigabyte of the 4TB drives. The 4TB drives are the price king as seen in the chart below of the current cost of Seagate consumer drives by size.
Seagate Hard Drive Prices by Size
| Drive Size | Model | Price | Cost/GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1TB | ST1000DM010 | $49. 99 | $0.050 |
| 2TB | ST2000DM006 | $66.99 | $0.033 |
| 3TB | ST3000DM008 | $83.72 | $0.028 |
| 4TB | ST4000DM005 | $99.99 | $0.025 |
| 6TB | ST6000DM004 | $240.00 | $0.040 |
| 8TB | ST8000DM005 | $307.34 | $0.038 |
The data on this chart was sourced from the current price of these drives on Amazon. The drive models selected were consumer drives, like those we typically use in our data centers.
The manufacturing and marketing efficiencies that drive the pricing of hard drives seems to have changed over time. For example, the 6TB drives have been in the market at least three years, but are not even close to the cost per gigabyte of the 4TB drives. Meanwhile, back in 2011, the 3TB drives models fell below the cost per gigabyte of the 2TB drives they replaced within a few months.
Have we as consumers decided that 4TB drives are big enough for our needs and we are not demanding (by purchasing) larger sized drives in the quantities needed to push down the unit cost?
Approaching Zero: There’s a Limit
The important aspect is the trend of the cost over time. While it has continued to move downward, the rate of change has slowed dramatically as observed in the chart below which represents our average quarterly cost per gigabyte over time.
The change in the rate of the cost per gigabyte of a hard drive is declining. For example, from January 2009 to January 2011, our average cost for a hard drive decreased 45% from $0.11 to $0.06—$0.05 per gigabyte. From January 2015 to January 2017, the average cost decreased 26% from $0.038 to $0.028—just $0.01 per gigabyte. This means that the declining price of storage will become less relevant in driving the cost of providing storage.
Back in 2011, IDC predicted that overall data will grow by 50 times by 2020, and in 2014, EMC estimated that by 2020, we will be creating 44 trillion gigabytes of data annually.
That’s quite a challenge for the storage industry especially as the cost per gigabyte curve for hard drives is flattening out. Improvements in existing storage technologies (Helium, HAMR) along with future technologies (Quantum Storage, DNA), are on the way—we can’t wait. Of course, we’d like these new storage devices to be 50% less expensive per gigabyte than today’s hard drives. That would be a good start.
Category: Cloud StorageTag: B2Cloud
About Andy Klein
Andy Klein is the principal storage cloud evangelist at Backblaze. He has over 25 years of experience in technology marketing and during that time, he has shared his expertise in cloud storage and computer security at events, symposiums, and panels at RSA, SNIA SDC, MIT, the Federal Trade Commission, and hundreds more. He currently writes and rants about drive stats, Storage Pods, cloud storage, and more.
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How to find out which hard drive is on a computer or laptop
Ordinary PC users do not need to know the components, the main thing is that everything works. If problems started with the computer, data disappeared or there was not enough space, then the question of which hard drive is in the computer becomes relevant. If this is your case or you just want to know how good your computer is, in this article we will look at how to find out the hard drive model in a computer or laptop.
Types of disks
There are currently three main types of disk drives: HDD, SSD and external hard drives.
- HDDs are common in almost every shop floor computer and cannot be confused with anything else.
- SSD drives are a modern and good alternative to HDDs, since there are no mechanics in them. Silent, fast and, accordingly, expensive.
- External hard drives are also common, they do not need to be placed inside the case, and are easy to connect to a computer.
How to find out everything about the hard drive
Let's look at several ways to find out information about your hard drive
Remove the hard drive from the case
For classic stationary desktops, the easiest way is to open the case and see what kind of drives you have installed. On laptops, depending on the model, only a screwdriver may be enough to get to the drive, and sometimes you need to disassemble the entire laptop case.
Important! If you refer to this method, be careful as the hard drive is very easy to damage, just drop it.
External drives are just a box with a hard drive inside. Therefore, despite the fact that there are only four manufacturers of hard drives now, many more companies produce external drives. For example, an external drive may be from Transcend, but inside there will be a Samsung drive.
As a result, if you managed to get a disk, then the hard disk itself always contains detailed information such as volume, model, manufacturer, and so on.
For Windows 9 users1150
Through My Computer. This method is suitable for Windows OS. This is the easiest way and does not require third party programs or pulling out the hard drive itself. It is enough to perform the following actions:
- right-click on the label "My Computer";
- click on the item "Management";
- go to the tab "Storage Devices" - "Disk Management";
- also in the "Device Manager" tab, select "Disk devices", there you will see the disk model.
The procedure may differ slightly depending on the version of Windows. In any case, in the Device Manager in the “Disk Devices” section, you will see all the SSD and HDD models that your operating system sees. If you know for sure that you have a hard drive and valuable data on it, but the computer does not see it, this is a reason to turn to specialists.
