Hard Drive Price per Terabyte: History and Current Prices

What changed and why

There are two kinds of number on this page and they measure different things. Our own figures are what a specific Amazon.com listing cost at the moment we read it, recorded every six hours. The eRacks series is the lowest price that publisher found for a drive line in a given month. Averaging those together would produce a figure that is neither, so they stay in separate layers with the source named against each.

Our line cannot reach back before our first reading, and we will not invent one. A price history page that shows a smooth curve starting years before the site began tracking is showing you a reconstruction. Reconstructions are where convenient numbers hide, because nobody can check them against anything.

The eRacks data covers March to August 2026, which is the window in which the current shortage reached retail. Five months is two data points per family, not a trend, which is why it renders as bars rather than a line. Within that window the pattern is consistent and worth stating plainly: every line rose, and the ones sold through retail rose most. Seagate Barracuda went from US$16.25 to US$31.25 per terabyte; Seagate Exos SATA went from US$24.33 to US$27.92.

Over a longer horizon the cost of spinning storage fell steadily for two decades, which is the reason the 2026 reversal is so jarring. The decline was driven by areal density improving faster than demand grew. Both halves of that broke at once: density gains slowed as the industry worked through the transition to heat-assisted recording, and demand bent sharply upward. Our HAMR roadmap covers the density side.

Who it hits, and how hard

Buyers comparing capacities should read the per-terabyte column rather than the price column. The advantage of larger drives widened through the run-up, because the increase fell hardest on the small capacities where fixed costs dominate.

Buyers comparing lines should be careful with the lowest number. A monthly low is a price someone could get, once, somewhere. Our median across tracked listings is a better guide to what you will actually pay, which is why both appear here and are labelled differently.

Anyone sizing an array should convert to usable capacity before comparing. A 4 TB drive reports as roughly 3.64 TiB, and RAID takes its share on top. Our cost per TB calculator shows both figures.

What to do now

1. Compare the per-terabyte column, not the price column, when choosing a capacity.
2. Use our cost per TB calculator for a specific pair of drives, including usable capacity after formatting.
3. Check the model number decoder for recording technology before putting a drive in an array.
4. Read why prices rose for the supply-side explanation behind these numbers.
5. Check whether prices will drop before deciding to wait.
6. Compare against flash on the SSD versus hard drive page if the workload would tolerate it.

Outlook

We do not forecast prices. What we can say is what this page will do: record a reading every six hours and publish the series as it accumulates, without backfilling it. The dated third-party figures stay where they are, attributed, and a line replaces the bars once any series reaches four points.

We publish no forecast of our own. Everything above is someone else's published position, with the date it was published and a link to it, because a price forecast from a site that sells against those prices is worth nothing to you.