this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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Hey all you beautiful selfhosters,

What are your suggestions for frugally obtaining HDDs in the current economic climate? Specifically the EU (Netherlands).

I'm looking at second hand drives, but even those go for โ‚ฌ100+ now, with bad sectors and all.

Can we organise a collective AI datacenter robbery and doll out some stolen drives? ๐Ÿ˜

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[โ€“] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Ive seen LTO for sale in person at the $300 USD mark...but I admit that's a rare occurrence / fire sale. So that "as little as" is probably not fair. Sorry and retracted.

EBay shows some in the $1200-1500 USD range (and maybe closer to $3-4K brand new).

That now makes me feel stupid for walking past one at $300 ("tape drive? Who the fuck needs that ancient shit") but I'm willing to bet that wasn't a lto-8, in hindsight.

Even my LTO-3 claim is not as remembered; I can find a lto-3 for $60 USD here locally (not the $5 I jokingly claimed), with cartridges in the $15 USD range.

https://ebay.io/m/1UST3Y

https://ebay.io/m/Gcf77T

Not bad, but not 12TB per cartridge.

All of this to say; the DVD shuffler + pi intermediary (+ NVIDIA shield if needed) is probably the genuinely better version of this. Bizarrely.