The Falling Cost of Storage: Cost per GB from 1970 to 2025
Digital storage is one of the most dramatic technological revolutions of the last half-century. Nothing in computing has dropped in price faster or more consistently than the cost of storing data. In 1970, storing a single gigabyte cost more than a luxury home. By 2025, storing that same gigabyte costs less than a penny.
This feature explores the wild, breathtaking collapse in storage pricing — from magnetic tapes to SSDs and NVMe — focusing only on physical storage, excluding cloud services.
1. The 1970s — Storage Was a Luxury Commodity
Reel-to-Reel Tape (Public Domain)
In the 1970s, storage was the domain of governments, labs, and large corporations.
1970 Cost per GB: - $500,000+ per gigabyte (tape + mainframe storage)
- Equivalent to $3.5 million today after inflation
Tape reels cost thousands, and the tape drives themselves were enormous and extremely expensive. Magnetic tape was cheap compared to disk drives, but still wildly unaffordable for consumers.
2. 1980 — Hard Drives Arrive, but Still Expensive
Early HDD (Public Domain)
Hard drives began shrinking in size and increasing in capacity.
1980 Cost per GB: - $100,000 per gigabyte
IBM’s 1980 HDD held 5 MB and cost around $1,500. The cost per gigabyte was falling — but still only government agencies and large businesses could afford large-scale storage.
3. 1990 — PCs Become Common, Storage Still Pricey
3.5-inch Floppy Disk (Public Domain)
With home PCs booming, demand increased — but prices were still high.
1990 Cost per GB: - $10,000 per gigabyte
A 40 MB hard drive for early PCs cost around $400. Even at this price drop, storage was still a limiting factor for consumer computing.
4. 2000 — Storage Hits the Mass Market
Compact Disc (Public Domain)
The year 2000 was a turning point.
2000 Cost per GB: - $10 per gigabyte (HDD)
- $0.20 per gigabyte (CD-R)
- Cheap CD burners - Growing digital media - Early external hard drives
5. 2010 — Flash Storage Goes Mainstream
USB Flash Drives (Public Domain)
Flash memory changed everything.
2010 Cost per GB: - $0.10 per gigabyte (HDD) - $1–$2 per gigabyte (SSD) - $0.30 per gigabyte (USB flash)
Mechanical HDDs were cheap and huge. SSDs were becoming faster but still expensive.
6. 2020 — SSD and NVMe Revolution
NVMe SSD (Public Domain)
By 2020, flash storage had matured.
2020 Cost per GB: - $0.02 per gigabyte (HDD) - $0.10–$0.15 per gigabyte (SATA SSD) - $0.20–$0.30 per gigabyte (NVMe SSD)
This era marked the first time SSDs became affordable for the average laptop, replacing HDDs entirely in many consumer devices.
7. 2025 — Storage Is Practically Free
Modern SSD (CC BY-SA)
By 2025, physical storage is cheaper and faster than ever.
2025 Cost per GB:
- HDD: $0.01–$0.02 per gigabyte - SATA SSD: $0.05 per gigabyte - NVMe SSD: $0.08–$0.12 per gigabyte
Timeline Summary — Cost per GB (1970–2025)
| Year | Storage Type | Typical Cost per GB |
|------|--------------|---------------------|
| 1970 | Tape / Mainframe | $500,000+ |
| 1980 | Early HDD | $100,000 |
| 1990 | Consumer HDD | $10,000 |
| 2000 | HDD | $10 |
| 2010 | HDD | $0.10 |
| 2020 | HDD | $0.02 |
| 2025 | HDD | $0.01 |
| 2025 | NVMe | $0.08–$0.12 |
The pricing decline follows an exponential curve — much steeper than Moore’s Law.
8. Why Storage Became So Cheap
Several innovations contributed:
1. Higher Density Recording
- From MFM → RLL → PRML → SMR - Areal density increased millions-fold
2. Shrinking Form Factors
- 14-inch → 5.25-inch → 3.5-inch → 2.5-inch → M.2
3. Flash Memory Revolution
- NAND fabrication - Multi-level cells (MLC → TLC → QLC)
4. Manufacturing Scale
- Billions of drives produced - Better wafers, better yield
5. Competition
- Western Digital - Seagate - Samsung - Micron - SK Hynix
9. Storage Size Explosion
1970s: 5 MB ### 1990s: 500 MB ### 2000s: 40 GB ### 2010s: 2 TB ### 2025: 30 TB (HDD), 8–16 TB (SSD)
Storage grew a millionfold in just 55 years.
10. What About Future Storage?
Physical storage will continue to evolve.
Near-Term Future (2025–2030)
- 50+ TB HDDs (HAMR/HDMR technologies)
- 20 TB QLC/PLC SSDs
- Faster PCIe 6.0 NVMe
Long-Term (2030 and beyond)
- Holographic storage experiments - Glass archival storage - DNA-based storage (early prototypes)
Final Thoughts: A Drop From Millions to Pennies
Digital storage has gone from:
- Luxury → Commodity - Megabytes → Terabytes - Thousands of dollars → Spare change
Nothing in the technology world has seen a price collapse this dramatic.
The next time you plug in a 2 TB SSD, remember: storing that amount of data in 1970 would have cost the price of a skyscraper.
Physical storage continues to advance — cheaper, faster, smaller — and 2025 is only another step in a relentless march toward near-free digital capacity.