He flew across the ocean to get the disc and came back. It was cheaper than buying it at home

Hard drive prices in the UK have reached such a level that it is more profitable to… fly to the USA for them. It sounds like a joke, but the story from Reddit shows that with a large enough price difference, absurdity can become a real savings plan.

User cgtechuk from the r/DataHoarder subreddit has been following prices for a long time 28-terabyte HDD in the UK. At one point he noticed that instead of waiting for a miracle, it would simply be cheaper get on a plane and buy the drives in the US. And that’s exactly what he did.

On Amazon UK model Seagate IronWolf Pro 28TB costs approx $980while in the US – less than 610. The difference on one piece is over $370and cgtechuk was planning to purchase ten. Simple math: savings exceed $3,700which is more than the cost flight to New York, a few nights at the hotel and even ““pocket money”. And in his case it turned out even better because he paid for the flight and accommodation loyalty points.

It is primarily responsible for the HDD price boom AI. Data centers consume storage media in astronomical amounts, a hard drives – slower than SSD, but many times cheaper per terabyte – they became for hyperscalers a natural choice for storage cold and warm data. Demand skyrocketed and supply couldn’t keep up.

Western Digital officially admitted that it was his production capacity for the entire year 2026 is already sold out. Since the third quarter of last year HDD prices increased by an average of 46 percentaw UK they also add their own contribution local margins and exchange rates.