After Rebuilding an old ThinkPad I have been doing more system upgrades again. The world has changed recently. Because of the AI boom the prices of RAM and SSD storage have greatly increased. However, at Free Geek Twin Cities I found a 3Tb (really 2.7TB) mechanical hard drive for a little over $30. Not as fast as an SSD, but probably OK with the older systems I use. This was an internal drive, so I bought an Inland drive enclosure from Micro Center with a USB 3.0 connector for another $30 or so.

One piece of the disk enclosure was missing. I could have gone back to Micro Center and asked to exchange it, but that would have meant an extra drive across the metro. It was just an end covering without any electronics, so I just used duct tape. The drive fit the case perfectly and when put together the drive was immediately recognized by both Windows and Linux. I formatted it as one big exFAT partition for now, since Windows and Linux can both work with it. I may do something more elaborate dowm the road. Counting the disk and the enclosure this comes out to roughly $24 per Terabyte. Slower than an SSD, but, especially now, much cheaper.

Afterwards I read Your modern hard drive is cheap because of a 1999 piracy craze, which argues that mass storage became much cheaper because of Napster craze c. 2000. I was aware of this at the time, but was simply not interested in having a large music collection. Hence I ignored it, bu I am happy to have the cheaper storage now.