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Other SSD Prices for our older Macs...WTF!!!!

D

DouglasCarroll

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Hi Everyone,

We all know that one of the "best" upgrades that you can do on an old Mac is to replace the slow often failing spinning hard drive with an SSD. USUALLY this is also a super cost effective upgrade....HOWEVER, has anyone else checked prices on SSD's lately? WTF!!!! I checked, for fun, OWC the other day (yeah, yeah I know they are more expensive, I don't care) and WOW what happened to their prices. Here are two screen shots below, one from today and one from wayback machine approximately 2 years ago, check out the increase on the 1TB SSD!!!




SSD 2026.png


SSD 2024.png


1TB was $129.99 and it's now $399.99 !?!?!?!?!?!

Who the hell is going to buy one of these things at those prices?

I am SUPER glad that I harvested a bunch of old SSD's out of used computers so I'm good for now but, man, this sucks for the hobby of "fighting the good fight to keep old computers alive"

😳
 
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Apple_Robert said:
Price increase for most products has been happening for several years. What you are seeing with SSD is no exception and shouldn’t be a shock.
Click to expand...
“Most products” have not increased OVER 100 percent in the last several years… in fact I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head that I’m paying more than double that I did 2 years ago…
 
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DouglasCarroll said:
“Most products” have not increased OVER 100 percent in the last several years… in fact I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head that I’m paying more than double that I did 2 years ago…
Click to expand...
First off, I don’t need you to capitalize words for me as I can read what you and others say here with no problems. Secondly, my original post did not specifically address or imply a 100% price increase for OWC or any other product. I simply stated that most products have seen an increase. If you don’t like the price, don’t buy. I think you are trying to make a really big deal out of the OWC pricing and it really isn’t.
 
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SSD prices have been going up along with RAM for the same reason: AI.

They seem to go up and down periodically anyways, I regret not buying a few super cheap ones last time they were at an all time low, think it was like $25 for 512GB which would've been perfect for some of my old Macs.
 
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Yeah, I assumed it had a similar core reason to RAM prices going up.

Not just solid brands either. The cheap-ass 16GB RAM/240GB SSD I picked up last August for a super budget MacBook upgrade project cost £15 each. Today, six months later, the SSD costs £32 and the RAM costs £43. 😯
 
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Most of the newer SSD drives have no or minimal on- board cache. I have a small herd of the legit .5 and 1 TB older ones
 
The 32GB of RAM I bought last year for my iMac now costs 6x more and a SSD for a different Mac is 4x more now!

There are still some honest folks around. I recently bought a 500GB SSD for $50 from a smaller, local computer shop that had old stock and didn't try to capitalize on the frenzy.

I can't wait for the AI bubble to pop!
 
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DouglasCarroll said:
Hi Everyone,

We all know that one of the "best" upgrades that you can do on an old Mac is to replace the slow often failing spinning hard drive with an SSD. USUALLY this is also a super cost effective upgrade....HOWEVER, has anyone else checked prices on SSD's lately? WTF!!!! I checked, for fun, OWC the other day (yeah, yeah I know they are more expensive, I don't care) and WOW what happened to their prices. Here are two screen shots below, one from today and one from wayback machine approximately 2 years ago, check out the increase on the 1TB SSD!!!




View attachment 2602879

View attachment 2602880

1TB was $129.99 and it's now $399.99 !?!?!?!?!?!

Who the hell is going to buy one of these things at those prices?

I am SUPER glad that I harvested a bunch of old SSD's out of used computers so I'm good for now but, man, this sucks for the hobby of "fighting the good fight to keep old computers alive"

😳
Click to expand...
Search for other brands if they are too expensive….
Samsung 860 EVO £150

www.amazon.co.uk

Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E1T0B/AM)

Samsung 860 EVO MZ-76E1T0B/AM 1 TB 2.5 Internal Solid State Drive - SATA - 550 MB/s Maximum Read Transfer Rate - 520 MB/s Maximum Write Transfer Rate - 256-bit Encryption StandardCondition: This item is brand new unopened and sealed in its original factory box.
www.amazon.co.uk
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
There's the OWC tax as people have mentioned, just get another brand from any PC parts shop.

But another factor is that, as older technology like these old sata drives becomes obsolete, there's less demand and it becomes more rare, so the prices can also go up a bit because of that.
 
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DouglasCarroll said:
Hi Everyone,

We all know that one of the "best" upgrades that you can do on an old Mac is to replace the slow often failing spinning hard drive with an SSD. USUALLY this is also a super cost effective upgrade....HOWEVER, has anyone else checked prices on SSD's lately? WTF!!!! I checked, for fun, OWC the other day (yeah, yeah I know they are more expensive, I don't care) and WOW what happened to their prices. Here are two screen shots below, one from today and one from wayback machine approximately 2 years ago, check out the increase on the 1TB SSD!!!


View attachment 2602879

View attachment 2602880

1TB was $129.99 and it's now $399.99 !?!?!?!?!?!

Who the hell is going to buy one of these things at those prices?

I am SUPER glad that I harvested a bunch of old SSD's out of used computers so I'm good for now but, man, this sucks for the hobby of "fighting the good fight to keep old computers alive"

😳
Click to expand...


Old news, first heard about this six months ago, at least. It’s not about OWC tax, it’s supply and demand. All those huge data servers you have heard about with AI takes a LOT of silicon, and to meet THAT demand manufacturers have been chasing profits by switching manufacturing over. So almost all forms of solid state storage have skyrocketed in price and will take a couple of years to recover.

Remember graphics cards and bitcoin farming? Same thing but bigger.

Capitalism can be a b*tch.
 
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I had just got done last year upgrading my 2,1 with several terabytes of storage, I have sympathy for anyone building up this year. The spirit of this forum has always been making things work with what is available and with the climate of new products as it is i'm glad to keep that spirit moving forward. I plan to hack up everything, search far and wide for used parts and keep the good vibes flowing via good deals on spare parts from enthusiast to enthusiast via trade shows like VCF.
 
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When vendors/manufacturers raise their prices by 2/3/4x+, that cost gets passed along to the consumer. The AI bubble has pretty much bought out the supply of flash and driven pricing up. That and tarrifs as well. This is not unique to us. SSDs will continue to increase in price across the board and either companies have raised their prices to reflect this or have not quite yet and will do so soon.
 
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Admittedly, I haven't looked for a new SSD in the last six months, but my last purchase was July 2025 for a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD off eBay. $55.46. Yeah, it was used, but it's got a 98.9% life expectency and passes SMART. A year before that was a brand new WD Blue 1TB SSD for $81 from Amazon.

Both eBay and Amazon have been good to me over the years.
 
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