{"id":77,"date":"2026-01-29T02:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T02:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taikhoanmienphi.net\/index.php\/2026\/01\/29\/need-cheap-storage-stop-buying-new\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T03:01:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T03:01:44","slug":"need-cheap-storage-stop-buying-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taikhoanmienphi.net\/index.php\/2026\/01\/29\/need-cheap-storage-stop-buying-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget 4TB SSDs: You can get a 24TB hard drive for half the price"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

With the price of SSDs rising rapidly and no relief likely for at least a few years, it is time to revisit old-fashioned mechanical hard drives. Despite their slower speeds, they’re still great for a huge range of applications, and they’re an excellent value option\u2014especially if you buy them used.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not everything needs a solid-state drive<\/h2>\n

For the last several years (except very recently), the price of solid-state drives have fallen steadily, and they’ve becoming blazing fast, as they’ve moved from the relatively slow SATA interface to PCIe 5.0, which supports transfer rates up to 16 gigabytes per second.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/picture>\n<\/picture>\n<\/picture>\n\"Samsung<\/picture>\nCredit:\u00a0Corbin Davenport \/ How-To Geek<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

However, most applications can’t really make use of those speeds. Even things you might expect to thrive with the extra speed often don’t, like the loading screen on video games.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the only thing that you can be pretty sure will scale well with increasing transfer speeds are jobs that involve moving large files.<\/p>\n

However, not everything calls for transfer speeds in the dozens of gigabytes per second\u2014often times, you can get by with less. If you’re just using a drive for cold storage, there isn’t really a minimum speed you need. Even if you’re using a drive in something like a Jellyfin server streaming 4K video content, you can easily <\/em>get by with as little as 100 megabytes per second.<\/p>\n

That means you don’t need to pay the extra premium associated with NVMe SSDS\u2014especially PCIe 5.0\u2014for every application. You can often get by with a regular mechanical hard drive<\/a> instead. They’re slower, but the price difference is enormous. For the cost of a 4TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD (about$550), you can get a 24 or 26TB mechanical hard drive.<\/p>\n

If you’re willing to shop refurbished or recertified, mechanical hard drives are an even better deal. I was able to find a refurbished 24TB hard drive for only $280<\/a>, and it had only been used for 50 hours. In the line of computer components, that is practically new.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What should you look for when buying a used drive?<\/h2>\n

In general, I’d recommend against buying used drives from places like Facebook Marketplace, where the only guarantee you have is someone’s word. The only exception is if the drive is included in the cost of an entire used PC you’re buying\u2014then there is really no harm.<\/p>\n

However, if you’re shopping on the internet, there are three big things I look for:<\/p>\n