If you haven’t shopped for memory cards or hard drives recently, be prepared for a serious case of sticker shock. My heart sank when I started browsing for new SD cards and found some prices that were double the typical cost.
Experts have been warning for some time that the storage needs of AI data centers would create a sharp increase in demand that would result in significant price increases. Unfortunately, those experts weren’t wrong.
I’m now seeing a number of memory cards that are double their typical cost. External hard drives for photographers and videographers storing their backlog of images have jumped significantly, too.
As a photographer with several terabytes worth of archives stored on external hard drives, the rise of storage costs is terrifying. Cameras are just pretty decorations with no memory card inside. Memory cards can only be written to a finite number of times – while high-end cards use functions like wear leveling to extend the lifespan, memory cards do occasionally need to be replaced.
Equally, the thought of deleting my backlog of images is painful just to think about, but eventually, I’m going to need to either add another hard drive to my collection or painstakingly go through my photos and delete the rejects to free up space.
The price of memory cards and hard drives right now is terrifying. But that doesn’t mean discounts and sales are unheard of. I’ve found a few deals that don’t give me heart palpitations on memory cards and SSDs from brands that I know and trust. And, I've even found some deals on protective cases to extrend to longevity of the memory cards I already have, which are now worth far more than when I bought them.
Some of these deals expire soon, while others rely on in-cart coupons. But, as of this writing, these are the best deals that I've spotted on memory cards and external hard drives.
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