Storage GB For The Buck 2009 Edition (Jan 23, 2009)

Now comes the question to ponder: how much GB per buck are you actually spending?

Ever thought how much GB per dollar you're getting when you pick up those multi-packs of CDs, or a brand new 1000 GB (or 1 TB) external hard drive?

Just going into Fry's Electronics yesterday and I bought a 16MB Polaroid SD card for $40. That's good for nightly archiving of my work files I use for my websites, though it takes an hour to transfer 2GB of some 30,000 files to the device. The upside is that I can reuse it again and again, erasing a previous backup to make room for a newer one. This doesn't replace my need to do bi-weekly backups on a DVD-R disc.

For the $40 16MB SD card, that comes to $1 for 0.4 GB, or 400 MB. They're more dependable than CD-RWs which I never had luck with with my data self-erasing after a month in storage.

The worst bang for the buck (except for the obsolete 1.44MB floppy) is the CD-R. You can get a 100-pack of 800MB CD-Rs for $20. It's 80GB of storage per pack. That's $1 for 4GB for storage, or five CD-R's.

Currently, the most GB for the buck is the DVD-R. You can get a 100-pack of 4.7GB DVD-Rs for $28. It's 470GB of storage per pack. That's $1 for 16.7GB for storage, or less than four DVD-R's.

There are DVD+R DL, that's double layer discs, which isn't really double capacity, but actually 8.5GB discs. I found a 25-pack of 8.5GB DVD+R DL discs for $25. It's 212.5GB of storage per pack. That's $1 per 8.5GB of storage, or one full disc.

There are now BD-E discs, actually, Blu-Ray write-once discs. I saw a 15-pack of 25GB discs for $90. That's $6 a disc. It's 375GB of storage per pack. It's $1 for 4.16GB of storage, or a sixth of a disc. The bang for your buck for the BD-E discs are slightly better than that for a 100-pack of CD-Rs.

In case you care, you can get 100 1.44MB floppy discs for $20. That's actually 0.00144GB floppies. For 100 floppies, you get 0.144GB. For $1, you get a paltry 0.0072GB. To get 1 full GB, you would need 695 floppies costing $139.

For external hard drives, you can imagine that back in 1994 when I first bought a replacement internal hard drive, it cost $400 for a 0.5GB drive. That's 500MB. For $1, you get a whopping 1.25MB or 0.00125GB of space.

Fast forward to the year 2009, 15 years later. I saw an external 1TB hard drive for $150. 1TB is 1,000GB, and also 1,000,000MB. Now for $1, you get 6.66GB of space. The funny thing is that it doesn't beat the GB per buck for DVD-R or DVD+R DL packs above, but beats the rate for the CD-R and BD-E disc packs above.

Portable flash drives continue to increase in storage as time goes on. In 2007, I got an 8GB USB flash drive for $80 (on sale, regular price was $160). Thats $1 for 0.05GB.

Today, you could get a Memorex brand 8GB USB drive for $40. That's $1 for 0.2GB.

There's a Corsair 64GB flash drive for $200. That's $1 for 0.32GB. It's slightly worse than that for a CD-R.

Per GB in rank from the above packages are ranked like this:

16.7   GB/$1 = 100-pack Memorex DVD-R $28
 8.5   GB/$1 = 25-pack Memorex DVD+R DL $25
 6.66  GB/$1 = 1TB external hard drive from Seagate $150
 4.16  GB/$1 = 15-pack Memorex BD-E $90
 4.0   GB/$1 = 100-pack Memorex CD-R $20
 0.4   GB/$1 = Polaroid $40 16MB SD card $40
 0.32  GB/$1 = Corsair 64GB USB flash drive $200
 0.2   GB/$1 = Memorex 8GB USB flash drive $40
 0.0072GB/$1 = 100-pack 1.44MB floppy discs for $20