The cost of storage has exploded - so, has this changed anything for you?

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Some storage and memory components have gone up in price by a factor of three or more. So I wonder: are you going to change anything about how you do your job?

For example, you could not buy SSDs and just use HDDs. HDDs are fast enough these days, I think, and they certainly hold more data per dollar. Or, you could go back to shooting 2K. Or 4K but with more compression.

I'm just curious, really. I do not need that much storage because I don't do professional video and I don't shoot very high resolution photos. I'd be happy with a HDD, at least for photography.

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Some changes. I have been making do with what I got for now. I wanted to buy more HDD, but have been holding off. I've got quite a bit of SSD. Someone had told me AI is grabbing it all up so that is why the price rise. Another one said tariffs caused it. But have no idea. 

A lot of my stuff gets put on M-Disc DVD, M-Disc BD-R and archival BD-R for an optical disc library. But M-Disc is not cheap either. M-Disc skyrocketed in price after covid hit. So, some of my archive does not need hard drives. I would have liked to get into LTO, but it is too complex setting it up and the drives are too $$ for me. 

I got tons of films that need scanning. Luckily for me they are 75% - 80% shorts and don't require massive storage like feature films. They can be handled with optical disc. But if I scanned them at 5K and above then there may be a problem with it and fitting on discs.

 

Edited February 28 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Robin Phillips]

havent had a large project since the prices shot up, but its gonna be a problem. if you need 100tb + for a show and drive prices even just double, its gonna be a bad time.

will say Im kicking myself for not grabbing a bunch of 8tb nvme drives while they were still "cheap"

[Tyler Purcell]

I knew this was going to happen and bought a ton of storage before the prices went up. I did miss out on the HDD's tho, I feel stupid for not filling a box with them because I didn't feel they would go up THAT much, seeing as they aren't used for AI workflow. I've seen around a 30% rise in HDD's over the last few months, but I think the older tech drives we are using today, will be displaced/discounted shortly when the laser based drives are released later this year. The "classic" HDD tech will slowly be discontinued and they'll blow things out, so don't fear about HDD as of yet. 

SSD/NVME, we're totally screwed on. The current pricing isn't even based on today's manufacturing either, most of the current inventory was made BEFORE the shutdown of consumer devices. So yea, the prices went up fast, but the moment those consumer companies like SanDisk have to use higher priced NAND's, oh gosh it's all over. I feel we will see prices double from what they are today when that happens. I have a total of 5 SanDisk Professional 4TB NVME's that I bought right before the prices went up, paid around $330 - $380 for each of them. Today they're $580 - $630 depending on where you look. I have a feeling 4TB NVME's, which are the sweet spot, will be around $800 in an enclosure shortly. They'll market them as "Thunderbolt 5" so people will think they're special, but it'll be the same Gen 4 4TB NVME we've seen for a while. 

My goal is to buy some HDD's once the prices start dropping again, I generally get the 18 - 24TB refurbished ones from Seagate and simply store them as single drives in my safe. I have drives that go back to 2003 still running great. I keep 3 backup's of "final" projects. One on dropbox/cloud, one on a 2.5" 4TB shuttle drive and the master files/finished edits on those bare 18 - 24TB HDD's. Spreading out their location helps a lot, we're going to be paying for vault space shortly to help with this. If you power up HDD's once every year, you can generally get pretty good life out of them. They need to be on and spinning for a few days, just to keep the bearings from ceasing. I pulled a drive from 2009 out of my safe few days ago, ran great. 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Thanks, everyone.

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I think the older tech drives we are using today, will be displaced/discounted shortly when the laser based drives are released later this year.

Wait wait wait. What is this sorcery of which you speak?

And thanks for the tip about storing HDDs. Good to know.

[Tyler Purcell]

4 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Thanks, everyone.

Wait wait wait. What is this sorcery of which you speak?

Yea check out HAMR and ePMR laser HDD recording, it's very fascinating. They have some smaller (30TB) drives out, but the next generation which is around a year out, will be in the 40 - 50TB and SSD speeds, around 600MB/s throughput, so around tripe that of a typical single HDD. 

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/western-digital-unveils-massive-40tb-hdd-that-records-data-using-lasers-plans-100tb-hamr-hard-drives-by-2029

4 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

And thanks for the tip about storing HDDs. Good to know.

Fo sho! 

Where I love LTO tape, because they keep changing formats every year or two, which means in 5 - 6 years you need to upgrade everything. With HDD"s, SATA hasn't changed much outside of performance metrics for 25 years. Unless there is a new "SATA" type that is not backwards compatible, then maybe we could have a discussion about something else. But frankly, HDD's sitting on shelves in a static bag, in a plastic pelican case, should last a lot longer than an LTO solution and I don't trust solid state at all. 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

19 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea check out HAMR and ePMR laser HDD recording, it's very fascinating. They have some smaller (30TB) drives out, but the next generation which is around a year out, will be in the 40 - 50TB and SSD speeds, around 600MB/s throughput, so around tripe that of a typical single HDD. 

I like it! Partly because it's an unexpected comeback from an older medium (but with a serious upgrade). It's as if film got 20 stops of latitude and digital is 'stuck' at 17! Progress doesn't always take the path we assume.

[Robert Harris]

Beyond a few RAIDs, and a large number of 8 to 28 TB HDD to share data, I’ve been using the SanDisk Pro blade station and 4k blades with multiple blade transports to move data between MACs.

I paid just over $2,300 for the station, 6 4k blades and one transport in March 2025. 

Current cost: $3,589.

Fortunately, I added more blades before the prices went nuts.

R

[Tyler Purcell]

Yea, all storage has gone mat hatter. 

IDK what to do either. 

[Hannes Famira]

I have been thinking about Blackmagic CloudDock Duo. This might be a way to store projects on individual drives but pop them in when you need them and instantly have access even over the web to edit in work groups. Right now I have a giant RAID drive but it makes me nervous to have all that data in one place. Does anyone have actual experience with that device?

Edited April 7 by Hannes Famira
Added URL and photograph

[Tyler Purcell]

52 minutes ago, Hannes Famira said:

Right now I have a giant RAID drive but it makes me nervous to have all that data in one place. Does anyone have actual experience with that device?

I have a 8 bay QNAP raid that's raid 5, it's 190TB all 28TB drives. I have "final" projects backed up onto other storage, but not the raws. I will generally edit off the raid and/or some thunderbolt NVME's we have as well, then when the project is over, give the files to the client and then delete the raws after a year or two. If it's my own project, I will media manage the raws and only keep them, rather than all the unused as well. I then buy big HDD's to back them up with and delete the masters off the raid. 

Storage prices won't equalize till the AI bubble bursts. SORA shutting down and a few other pieces of bad news, have led me to believe we should see the bursting shortly. Then the manufacturers will need to get back into production of NANDs. So it may not happen till next year. 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

5 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea, all storage has gone mat hatter. 

IDK what to do either. 

The vibe I'm getting is to store past projects on a HDD, and use an SSD for current projects. Of course, you could just use higher compression if you're using R3D. Very few projects will need anything more than UHD, AFAIK? 

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

The vibe I'm getting is to store past projects on a HDD, and use an SSD for current projects. Of course, you could just use higher compression if you're using R3D. Very few projects will need anything more than UHD, AFAIK? 

Yea, if you're using compressed non-raw media, it's way easier to re-compress. 

We're 100% raw... so it's WAY crazier. The good news, is that I shoot digital like film, start/stop every time I get a chance, breaking up stuff so I can easily delete stuff I'm not ever going to use. 

[Robert Harris]

6 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

The vibe I'm getting is to store past projects on a HDD, and use an SSD for current projects. Of course, you could just use higher compression if you're using R3D. Very few projects will need anything more than UHD, AFAIK? 

This must be based upon your needs and the importance of your work surviving a longer period of time.

Neither SSD nor HDD are good archival solutions, although 6 or 8 drive RAIDS are helpful. SSD is the more problematic.

My current concept of “archival” are LTO8s, with geographic separation.  An LTO generally has a safe life of 30 years. The only real problem there can be playability via updated operating systems, for which updated clones to new systems may be one answer.

For my working arena, which is restoration and preservation, the ultimate end result and the best truly archival media is recording back to 65mm or 35mm negative on polyester stock and quality storage. Unfortunately, an expensive situation, not generally available below the studio or major archive level.  

Hence, I personally go for multiple geo-sep LTOs.

As far as compression goes, we find that while we prefer to save as dpx files, compressing to mxf is the current answer for many situations, as those files seem to convert back to dpx without loss.

To put things in perspective, a number of years ago I delivered a major 4k project for archival both via recorded 35mm negative and answer print as well as LTO, which at that time amounted to (if I recall correctly) 37 tapes.

Hope this is in some way helpful.

R

[Karim D. Ghantous]

15 hours ago, Robert Harris said:

To put things in perspective, a number of years ago I delivered a major 4k project for archival both via recorded 35mm negative and answer print as well as LTO, which at that time amounted to (if I recall correctly) 37 tapes.

That's... a lot of tape! I hear that optical discs are getting more dense, at least in theory.

[Tyler Purcell]

34 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

That's... a lot of tape! I hear that optical discs are getting more dense, at least in theory.

Yea, plus the LTO business model only really works with 2 copies of each tape; one for the mine and one for the vault. Having setup dozens of top post houses in Los Angeles and New York over the years, most of the LTO business is simply disaster recovery. The entire raid went down and can't be recovered, or someone deleted huge swaths of data without anyone knowing, or the building caught fire. Having a single LTO drive and using it to backup your "final" shows, isn't a bad idea, LTO is a great format. It's just, they can still fail, they can still have issues and unless you're writing a lot of tapes, the infrastructure to get it all working and understand what is on each tape, can be expensive and you really need network storage and a separate archival computer to make use if it. This kinda is a lot for most people. I have three workstations and adding a 4th JUST for archive, doesn't make much sense. Our clients give us drives, we put the files on to them, that's the end of our commitment. So it's really our products that we care about and seeing as I have drives that are now 25 years old that work great still, I'm not concerned about HDD tech at all. It's more money yes, but I also don't need A LOT of space. A 28TB drive, once a year, covers me. That's PEANUTS compared to the cost to get LTO setup. 

[Robert Harris]

7 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea, plus the LTO business model only really works with 2 copies of each tape; one for the mine and one for the vault. Having setup dozens of top post houses in Los Angeles and New York over the years, most of the LTO business is simply disaster recovery. The entire raid went down and can't be recovered, or someone deleted huge swaths of data without anyone knowing, or the building caught fire. Having a single LTO drive and using it to backup your "final" shows, isn't a bad idea, LTO is a great format. It's just, they can still fail, they can still have issues and unless you're writing a lot of tapes, the infrastructure to get it all working and understand what is on each tape, can be expensive and you really need network storage and a separate archival computer to make use if it. This kinda is a lot for most people. I have three workstations and adding a 4th JUST for archive, doesn't make much sense. Our clients give us drives, we put the files on to them, that's the end of our commitment. So it's really our products that we care about and seeing as I have drives that are now 25 years old that work great still, I'm not concerned about HDD tech at all. It's more money yes, but I also don't need A LOT of space. A 28TB drive, once a year, covers me. That's PEANUTS compared to the cost to get LTO setup. 

I’ve been waiting patiently for someone to bring up up - was it Toy Story files?

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, Robert Harris said:

I’ve been waiting patiently for someone to bring up up - was it Toy Story files?

I mean I've been involved in disaster recovery before. Ready for this? On a weekend when nearly everyone was out of town, the A/C unit above the server room failed, but the power went THROUGH the server room and it smoked, causing the fire sprinkler system to go off. The WAN servers failed first, so we couldn't log in remotely to turn everything off. So we all got into our cars, but the fire department was there and wouldn't let us up. So the servers soaked in water for 30 minutes, we lost everything. 

The tapes survived, but it took around a month to get it all back up and running on temporary storage.