Hard drives are being price gouged. The prices on the low-end have stayed the same since pre-flood and the $/tb hasn't improved in a long time. Also the fact that the almost identical( and sometimes exactly identical down to serial number) externals often cost half as much as the internals( with only some extra warranty to cover the difference). It's a broken market.
Given the proliferation of lower-performing SMR drives, effective HDD prices have actually gone up rather than down. We're forced to pay the same price for grossly inferior products.
