A Reddit user on the r/DataHoarder subreddit shared how they were able to save money on hard drives by flying to the U.S. Instead of purchasing them directly in the U.K. According to u/cgtechuk, they’ve been monitoring the prices of 28TB drives in the U.K., and only saw them go up. Because of this, they decided to take a trip after New Year's to buy ten of these high-capacity drives in the U.S. Instead. Since Best Buy and B&H Photo both set a maximum purchase limit of just five drives each, the Redditor decided to get the drives from both shops. When the order was confirmed, they then booked a flight and a hotel in New York.
Decided to fly to the US to buy some hard drives from r/DataHoarder
We checked Amazon to see the cost of the Seagate IronWolf Pro 28TB HDDs in the U.K. And the U.S., and what we found was quite jaw-dropping. In the U.S., this hard drive "only" costs $609.99 a piece — and you could even get a discount on them if you’re able to find a good hard drive deal. On the other hand, Amazon UK lists the same drive and capacity at $980.46.
That’s a price difference of more than $370 per drive, and if you’re getting ten of these, then you’re looking at a savings of at least $3,700. On the other hand, the cheapest round-trip tickets between London Heathrow and JFK International start at less than $700. Even if you factor in the cost of a cheap hotel near JFK, which goes for around the same price for four nights, plus an extra $300 for pocket money, you’re still looking at savings of around $2,000. U/cgtechuk would have saved even more than that, though, as they said that they redeemed points for both the flight and the hotel stay.
To avoid getting scammed, they recorded everything when they picked up the drives they bought from Best Buy and B&H, including the serial numbers. They then tested each and every drive in their hotel with SeaTools, Crystal, and even copied files onto them to ensure that they didn’t get scammed with swapped-out drives. With everything verified, they then packed all ten drives (with their foam inserts) in their carry-on while putting their packaging in their checked luggage in case they need it for warranty.
Even though the AI build-out has mostly affected memory and storage chips, hard drives are also slowly but surely following the trend of limited availability and increased prices. In fact, their prices have surged by 46% since the third quarter of last year, and Western Digital has reported that its production capacity for 2026 is already sold out. This is because even though hard drives are much slower than SSDs, they’re still crucial for AI hyperscalers for nearline storage. With the latter surging in cost (up to 16x more expensive than HDDs), data centers are switching to more cost-efficient HDDs to store massive amounts of warm or cold datasets. This, in turn, drives up demand, resulting in higher prices for everyone, including consumers.
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