In what's perhaps a Real Deal record, the average price for SDLT 600 drives shot up a dramatic 23.5% this month, regaining nearly all it had lost over the course of the autumn. The price increase seemed particularly steep relative to the near-flat pricing of other tape drives and slight increases in media pricing. But disk drives also showed significant movement for the second month in a row. The normally unflappable 36GB and 73GB SCSI drives dropped by 6.5% and 8.5%, respectively. Together, their average 7.5% price drop outstripped even parallel and serial ATA drive price drops, which averaged only 7.25% for the month.

Hard Disk drives

Tape drives

Media

All charts are average cost per unit