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Hard drive price per gigabyte: 1980 vs 2023

Price of 1 gigabyte of PC hard drive storage in 1980, scaled from a real drive's price

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Source: CHM, Our World in Data, ComputerBase · October 2026

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The numbers
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3 on the list. The figures appear here once the clip gives the answer away.

Narration

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Runs 0:41.

How to read this chart: A question, a countdown that speeds up as it drains, then the answer: wrong options are crossed out, the right one lights up, and the number rolls in. Where a poll split or option values are given, bars show how everyone else guessed and a number line shows how far off each guess was. The point is to commit to a guess before the ring empties. More on quiz reveal charts.

The takeaway

At the launch price of the first 5.25-inch hard drive in 1980, a gigabyte would have cost about $300,000, against 1 to 2 cents in 2023. As of October 2026, hard drive prices are rising again.

The data

The numbers

This clip asks you to guess first.

The numbers open when the clip reaches its answer, so they can't give it away.

Source: CHM, Our World in Data, ComputerBase. As of October 2026.

What the numbers show

This quiz asks what one gigabyte of storage would have cost in 1980 on a personal computer hard drive. A gigabyte is a unit of digital storage. In 2023, one gigabyte cost between 1 and 2 cents. The 1980 price is the answer to the quiz, and it was far higher.

The answer scales up the launch price of the first 5.25-inch hard drive, the Seagate ST-506, which fitted personal computers. The Computer History Museum records that price per megabyte. Multiplying it by 1,000 gives the price per gigabyte. It is the price people paid in 1980, not adjusted for inflation. It is the price of a drive for personal computers, not of every kind of disk drive.

A second source is a rough cross-check, not a match. Our World in Data publishes a long series of the cheapest disk drive prices recorded up to each year, built from the records of the computer scientist John C. McCallum. It is adjusted for inflation to 2020 dollars, so it states a different number, and it is not a 1980 market price. Its 1980 value is of the same order of magnitude as the answer.

The same series gives the 2023 price: about 1 cent per gigabyte. A shop price agrees. Tom's Hardware reported that a 4TB Seagate IronWolf drive cost $70 in early 2023, which is under 2 cents per gigabyte.

The long fall in price has not run in one direction forever. ComputerBase, a German technology site, tracks a basket of 12 popular hard drives in its price comparison. By 16 October 2026, they cost 146% more on average than in mid-September 2025, up from 134% a month earlier. In July 2026, TrendForce reported that strong demand from Chinese PC makers and AI data centres had tightened hard drive supply and pushed contract prices higher, citing a MoneyDJ report.

On 30 September 2026, TrendForce also said it expects flash memory contract prices to rise 15-20% in the fourth quarter of 2026, and conventional DRAM contract prices to rise 10-15%. These are forecasts of what large buyers pay, not shop prices. As of October 2026, these are the latest figures each publisher has released, and newer reports may change them.

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Transcript

  1. A gigabyte cost 1 to 2 cents in 2023. What did it cost in 1980?

  2. Is it about 300 dollars, about 3,000 dollars, or about 300,000 dollars? These are the prices people paid in 1980, scaled up from a home-computer drive. Think about it, then lock in your guess.

  3. About 300,000 dollars at PC drive prices: 5 megabytes cost 1,500. As of October 2026, hard drive prices are rising.

  4. That's today's stat from NumberReels. What did you guess, and did the 2026 price rise surprise you? Comment your answer. Like, share and subscribe for more at numberreels.com.

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