HDD, SSD, or Cloud Backup in 2026: Cheapest Storage Per GB Compared

Storage prices have roughly doubled since 2024. A 2TB portable SSD that cost around €100 in 2023 now runs €240 or more, when you can find stock at all. If you've been waiting for prices to drop before building out your backup setup, the short answer is: don't count on it before 2027.

This article covers what storage actually costs right now, why, and which option makes sense depending on how much data you're dealing with.

Why Storage Prices Have Doubled Since 2024

The root cause is AI infrastructure. Training and running large language models requires enormous amounts of storage. Not just fast SSDs for active processing, but vast libraries of data sitting on traditional hard drives. AI companies scaled their data center buildouts faster than storage manufacturers could respond.

The numbers: Microsoft Azure and AWS were each buying more than 500,000 SSDs per quarter in 2025. NAND wafer spot prices went from $2.70 to over $23 for a 512Gb TLC chip between October 2025 and early 2026, an 8.5x increase in a few months. Consumer SSDs ended up downstream of a supply chain that had been fully redirected toward enterprise customers.

Hard drives got hit separately. AI data centers use HDDs for "warm" storage (data that isn't actively being processed but needs to stay accessible). Western Digital's CEO stated the company was "pretty much sold out for Calendar 2026" with firm purchase orders from their top seven customers before the year even started.

US tariffs added another 10-20% on top of the supply crunch.

Manufacturers are also intentionally not producing more. Samsung cut NAND output from 4.9 million to 4.68 million wafers per year. SK Hynix cut from 1.9 million to 1.7 million. Both cuts were made while demand was rising. This isn't a supply chain problem. It's a business decision. They were burned badly in 2022-2023 when oversupply crashed NAND prices to the point where everyone was losing money, and they're not rushing to repeat that. Micron went furthest and exited consumer NAND production entirely, pivoting to higher-margin enterprise chips.

Market analysts don't expect meaningful relief until 2027. The supply-demand gap is structural: NAND demand is growing 20-22% year over year, while supply is only increasing 15-17%.

Photographers and videographers are getting squeezed from multiple angles. It's not just backup drives. Memory cards have followed the same curve. A 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card that cost $90 is now $190. A 128GB CFexpress Type B from Lexar: $52 then, $110 now.

Hard Drive Prices Right Now

HDDs are still the cheapest way to store large amounts of data per terabyte, even after the price increases.

Portable 2.5" drives (bus-powered, no wall adapter):
Current Amazon pricing in Europe (May 2026):

• 4TB: around €125-150 (€31-37/TB)
• 5TB: around €120-130 (€24-26/TB), the current sweet spot
• 6TB: around €190-200 (€32-33/TB)

In US dollars, comparable drives run $100-140 for 4TB and $120-150 for 5TB.

The 5TB portable has the best per-TB value in Europe right now. The 4TB and 6TB options end up costing more per terabyte at current pricing.

Desktop 3.5" drives (need a power adapter, much higher capacity):
Desktop drives are cheaper per terabyte than portables. High-capacity units (16TB+) bear the most AI-driven pressure, while consumer capacities have seen more moderate increases:

• 8TB: roughly €150-200 (€19-25/TB)
• 12TB NAS-grade (WD Red, Seagate Ironwolf): went from around €200 to €300, a 50% jump

Reliability note: HDDs have moving parts and are sensitive to drops while spinning. For a backup drive on a desk, this is rarely a practical concern. For drives that travel in a camera bag or checked luggage, SSDs are safer.

SSD Prices Right Now

SSDs have taken the worst of the price increases. The NAND shortage hit consumer SSDs hardest because manufacturers prioritized higher-margin enterprise products.

Portable SSDs:

• Samsung T7 Shield 2TB: was €100-120, now around €250-290
• SanDisk Extreme Portable 2TB: was €100, now around €200-220
• SanDisk Creator Pro 4TB: went from €250 to €550+ in about a month in early 2026

If you bought a 2TB portable SSD two years ago, you paid roughly a third of what it costs today.

Internal NVMe (for an enclosure or Mac upgrade):

• 2TB NVMe average (US market): $169 before the surge, $358 now, up 114%
• 4TB NVMe: similarly elevated

The case for SSDs hasn't changed. Drop resistance and compact size are genuine advantages for mobile workflows. But at current prices, a portable SSD costs 4-6x more per terabyte than a portable HDD. For a drive that sits on a desk as a backup destination, the premium is hard to justify right now.

Cloud Storage Prices Right Now

Cloud pricing has been one of the few stable parts of this picture so far. The hyperscalers signed long-term supply contracts before the spike hit, and competitive pressure between providers keeps everyone holding the line for now. But cloud prices will almost certainly follow eventually. Backblaze has already raised prices once in the past two years, and if HDD costs stay elevated into 2027, another round is plausible. Worth factoring into any long-term comparison.

S3-compatible object storage (what backup tools like Tusk or Arq connect to):

Consumer cloud for comparison:

Consumer plans look cheap at 2TB. Past that, costs climb fast and the S3-compatible options are a better fit for automated backup workflows.

How Much You Pay Over Five Years

One thing the table below doesn't show: cloud storage includes built-in redundancy. When you store something with Backblaze B2 or AWS S3, the provider keeps multiple copies across multiple data centers. A single external drive is one copy. To get the same level of redundancy locally, you'd need two or three drives. Even with that adjustment, physical storage still wins on cost over five years, but the gap narrows once you're buying two drives instead of one.

Physical drives still win on five-year cost by a factor of 5-10x, even at elevated current prices. Cloud makes sense as an offsite layer for your most critical files, not as a full replacement for local drives.

Buying Used: The Option Most People Overlook

If current prices are making you wince, secondhand drives are worth considering. The r/DataHoarder community has been doing this for years, and it's a legitimate strategy for building up backup capacity cheaply.

Where to look:

• eBay and eBay Kleinanzeigen (especially in Germany and Austria) often have bulk lots from businesses upgrading or decommissioning servers
• Wallapop (Spain), Marktplaats (Netherlands), Leboncoin (France) for local listings
• IT liquidation auctions: companies shutting down or refreshing their hardware infrastructure often sell storage in bulk, sometimes for a fraction of retail price
• Local classifieds in general: a lot of drives that were used lightly in a small business NAS end up listed for €15-20 each

The main risk is unknown failure history. Before trusting any secondhand drive with real data:

1. Check the SMART data with a tool like DriveDx (Mac) or CrystalDiskInfo (Windows)
2. Run a full surface scan before putting anything on it
3. Never use a secondhand drive as your only copy of anything

Used drives make sense as the second or third copy in a 3-2-1 backup setup, where you're not relying on any single drive. For that use case, buying three used 4TB drives for €50 each beats buying one new one at €150.

Which Option Makes Sense for Your Backup?

Long-term, local storage is almost always the better financial decision. Cloud costs 5-10x more over five years and those prices are likely to rise. Local drives are expensive upfront right now, but once you own them, you're done paying.

That said, local-only backup has one serious limitation: everything is in the same place. A fire, flood, or burglary takes out your Mac and your backup drives together. The 3-2-1 backup strategy is the standard answer to this: three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, with one copy stored offsite. The "offsite" part is the one most people skip, and it's the one that actually saves you when something goes wrong.

What that offsite copy looks like depends on how much data you're dealing with.
If you work with large files (footage, RAW photos, project archives), cloud storage gets expensive fast at those volumes. The practical answer is a second external drive kept at a different physical location: a friend's place, a family member's house, your office. Swap it out every few months. No monthly fees, no upload time, and your data survives a physical disaster.

If you have a smaller amount of genuinely critical data, adding a cloud destination makes a lot of sense. Cloud is always offsite, always accessible, and doesn't require you to remember to physically swap anything. Just be aware that with hard drive prices rising the way they are, cloud prices will likely follow. Factor that into the five-year math before committing to it as a long-term solution.

If you back up locally and want to actually know where everything is, Tusk is worth looking at, especially if you're a videographer, photographer, or creative professional with footage spread across multiple drives. It watches your project folders automatically, tracks every file's location even when drives are unplugged, and won't let you delete local copies until backups are confirmed. The full workflow in one tool.

If you just need a straightforward scheduled backup to an external drive, you don't need Tusk. Carbon Copy Cloner, ChronoSync, or even the built-in Time Machine will be a great fit for you.