Hard drives are expected to reach $0.01 per gigabyte by mid-2025

[Fastturtle]

My first HD was bought in mid 80s. 10MB (not GB) Seagate - I think it cost me about $300 (pre-inflation dollars).

Mine was a Winchester Diskpak and only had 15MB while costing over $1000 USD in 82

 

[Danny101]

I just bough 4 HDD of 16TB for my HTPC. I was able to get them for around 210$ each, all fees included.

HDD are still there to stay until there is a cheaper way to store data. They are not going away anytime soon as long as datacenter needs them.

SSDs are great and all, but they are not made for storing data.

The problem with SSDs is that they just fail without notice. Hard drives at least give you some advance notice and if you don't power them for a while they'll keep your data. I'm looking forward for the hard drive multi actuator technology to keep advancing at least to the point where it can saturate a SATA connection and beyond. You know tape drives are still around so why would hard drive just go away? Ssds just aren't really that good for backup. 2 years ago I moved and I have a desktop that I honestly haven't turned on since then since I've been using a laptop. I just haven't been in a position to start utilizing my laptop again. It has the SSD plus hard drive configuration and I'm curious to see if the SSDs still holds the information the next time I go to turn it on. It's been since the spring of 2020 so I'm crossing my fingers.

 

[Danny101]

I recommend a high quality SSD and HDD. I don't want an SSD with anything lesser than TLC. If you're SSS fails, it could be a capacitor. Replace that the drive may work again with data intact. I never compress data. Increases chànces of data failure and there's no longer a need. The last time I tried, it was in the mid-90's and the reads was too slow. Soi never bothered with that again. I just buy another drive.

 

[NikoBB]

I recommend a high quality SSD and HDD. I don't want an SSD with anything lesser than TLC. If you're SSS fails, it could be a capacitor. Replace that the drive may work again with data intact. I never compress data. Increases chànces of data failure and there's no longer a need. The last time I tried, it was in the mid-90's and the reads was too slow. Soi never bothered with that again. I just buy another drive.

It does not matter. For the end user, the reliability of any SSD/HDD is always 50/50. If your valuable data is in a single copy, you have already lost it. And that means a person is either stupid or does not consider this data valuable.

Getting data out of an SSD is nearly impossible, even at professional recovery companies. And new HDDs also have encrypted firmware, so there are already few chances with the replacement of mechanics and electronics from a donor, even for a professional.

Only multiple backups - at least 3-4 physical storage devices and preferably 1-2 copies geographically in different points, will save your probably valuable data.

It is obvious that modern helium HDDs are not reliable storage in the future 10+ years.

DVD/BD are too small. And as shown by multiple studies - two-layer / three-layer BD-Rs are notorious. Thus, with the growth of volumes (and many, like me, have been writing home history in 4k video for many years) exponentially, only HDDs remain without helium and faith in success with several copies...